For hundreds of years, people thought stress and food caused ulcers. It was scientific fact and if you doubted it, you'd likely be labelled a crackpot. Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria.
So consensus was wrong. Very wrong.
I'd prefer it if people kept questioning everything. How else do we push forward our knowledge?
The thing that I hate about this argument of 'consensus has been wrong before' when it comes to climate change is that essentially, the argument seems to be 'everyone always said we were pumping too much CO2 into the air and that would cause global warming and now there's people saying that consensus is wrong'.
Unless I'm seriously wrong with my scientific history (and it's extremely possible!) I didn't think this was the case. Decades ago there were people talking about it but the consensus was that it was crackpottery.
However now that consensus has decided "yeah, we were wrong" people point at that consensus and say "hey, consensus has been wrong before!". I look at that and just think... yeah, we know. It was wrong and we've spent a heap of time finding that out.
I mean, it's not the case that 100% of people knew it as a 'scientific fact' that CO2 lead to climate change and now we're starting to question that consensus. The questioning has already happened.
Before people thoughts ulcers were caused by stress they probably thought it was due to too much "humor" and required treatment by bloodletting.
The point is that we advance scientific thinking by challenging ideas. If right now most scientists thinking global warming is real, then fine. Just don't try and shutdown the ones that don't agree.
No one is trying to shut down scientists that don't agree; they're trying to shut down the ignorant public who's non agreement is baseless because they're getting in the way of setting public policy based on the best information science has to offer us at the moment.
That is a problem that will never go away. You will always have someone spreading incorrect information and "getting in the way" (vaccines cause autism, etc).
If the global warming data is as rock-solid as they, I wouldn't worry to much about it.
Yeah, that's a good point and I see where you're coming from. But generally when I hear the argument about consensus, it seems to end with nothing other than an implication of "and therefore they're obviously wrong, simply because of the current consensus".
People should keep questioning. But it's time to stop the faux-modesty of "we might be wrong so we shouldn't do anything". We make the best decision we can based on the evidence at the time, and if the scientific consensus is right (which, while not certain, is very likely), we can't afford to do nothing.
Scientists should always continue to question everything when doing science; the general public however is not in a position to do this and they should follow the consensus of scientists when setting public policy. You can't wait forever when making policy, so you go with the current best knowledge.
Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria. So consensus was wrong. Very wrong.
Interestingly, among people who have Helicobacter pylori in their stomachs, only a subset develops ulcers. Some people have bacteria, but no ulcer. I don't know if there is a consensus on why this happens, but it is correlated with stress. If you are stressed and have h.pylori, you are more likely to develop an ulcer, compared to h.pylori and no stress.
So the consensus was wrong, but still not a hundred percent wrong.
For hundreds of years, people thought stress and food caused ulcers. It was scientific fact and if you doubted it, you'd likely be labelled a crackpot. Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria.
So consensus was wrong. Very wrong.
I'd prefer it if people kept questioning everything. How else do we push forward our knowledge?