Posted by
South Sounder on Thursday, July 06, 2006 5:49:45 PM
Recently on Charlie Rose,
oh about 14:00 minutes into the program, Al Gore proclaims:
"The debate’s over. The people who dispute the international
consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the
people who think the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona."
In a 2003 speech, Author Michael Crichton had this to say about consensus and science (emphasis added):
I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and
the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus
science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped
cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been
the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming
that the matter is already settled. 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.
The whole Crichton speech is well worth the read.