Sunday, March 21, 2010

Consensus Pseudoscience



"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert." -- Arthur C. Clarke, author, 1999

Michael Crichton, Aliens Cause Global Warming, Jan 2003 (Hat tip: Louis)

Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.

4 comments:

TOMAS said...

Your posts are worthy pondering deeper indeed. While speaking about the consensus of scientists you were so right. The same may be said about the artists too. Consensus and love have nothing in common between.
By the way, the same belongs to politics too (we honor the leaders who talk their mind but not nicely retort to ABC truth)

OilIsMastery said...

Thanks Tomas. Consensus in art is also a sham. Consensus in art would mean Britney Spears > Mozart.

Quantum_Flux said...

True

Fungus the Photo! said...

The clue is in the word Dis Cover. Exploration.

Looking at what others cannot see until it is rendered into their understanding, and often not even then!

Science means knowledge. Scio, Sciere. Latin. It was fosterd by those who have had a very dubious regard for the truth but who profess the Truth as they define it. Subsequent revisions as a result of their discoveries meant that their ability to command respect was diminished and therefore, they set out to slow science. Now, even scientists have fallen into this behaviour!

The key to freedom is a knowledge of history from all sourves. Slavery is a result of TV, credit and consumerism. Very few people care, the rest are sheep.
The point of formal education is no longer to free the mind?