>>>>>Whenever I see "scientific consensus" my doubts rise. It sounds so much like "anyone who disagrees won't get his research funded and no tenure either".
>>>>>
>>>>>Proof. Science has proof. Or doesn't, in which case it says "we still don't know".
>>>>>
>>>>>What's next, vote to revoke Newton's laws?
>>>>
>>>>In fact everything in science is a consensus. Scientific facts are only valid until proven otherwise, upon which the facts are redefined.
>>>
>>>Then that consensus has to be voted again every time a theory has to be changed because of new findings. Ah, and those who were still messing with the facts (and eventually found the new ones) were against the facts as known and agreed upon, so they were the dissenters. If you have dissent, you don't have consensus.
>>
>>Not quite sure what you want to say.
>
>How is consensus achieved? Deliberating until there's a statement to which all can agree. That's politics, perhaps democracy, but certainly not science.

That is not how I view it. A scientific consensus should be representing a hypothesis on a scientific basis, free from politics. It is an optional stage in the scientific method on its way to become a Theory (I was corrected by Al to use the word Theory rather than Fact).

This stage is important as it is a firm base from which further investigation/work. Since some hypothesis might be very difficult to prove, science can only offer a 'scientific consensus' for decades or even centuries, until they work their way up to what science call "Theories".

Now you might want to disagree with a particular "Scientific consensus" and I'm sure there are examples to find where there are good arguments available. But at the least one should come up with these good arguments to reject it (No, biblical text does not count :) )

If we look at the topic of discussion, there is an overwhelming set of evidence, observation, peer reviews, that point into the direction of the "consensus" that IMO you need VERY good and solid arguments arguing otherwise.

Again, the value of scientific consensus is that it acts as a truth until proven otherwise, a basis which can be used for further investigation or elsewhere in science.

Example: In construction, lots of empirical numbers are being used to calculate whether constructions are strong enough. Those numbers have never been proven to be scientifically correct nor accurate, but they are being used in practise without proven to be incorrect.


>The whole scientific community (whatever that means and whatever that encompasses) may agree that a certain proof is valid, it doesn't matter - one single guy can tear the whole consensus down by finding an error in the proof. Now whether that guy was there in the process (so he agreed but then changed his mind - i.e. the consensus is always temporary) or he wasn't counted (so the consensus is among an incomplete set of scientists - only a majority consents, not everybody).

But that is not that different from a Scientific Theory. How many Theories have been rewritten in our history? There is no such thing as an absolute truth in science.

>Specially so in the so-called humanities, which aren't exactly sciences, only bodies of knowledge where scientific method is applied to some extent. My experience with them (including medicine!) is that I always take with a sizable grain of salt whatever they say. "Over 50% is A" can also be read as "Almost 50% is not A". Both are statistically significant, but statistical significance is just correlation, an indicator that there may be some connection which should be investigated. Correlation is not causation.

Sounds like 'junk science'. I agree that especially in medicine a lot of bad science exists, often also influences by commercial motives. The problem in this field is a lack of industry standards and quality peer reviews are scarce and sometimes is missing. Lots of this won't stand the tests of the scientific method

>My favorite pet peeve (and red flag as well) is when they say "but the numbers don't lie!". But they do. I have no doubt that their excel sheet is as bug free as it gets, but I have reasons to doubt that their initial set of numbers truly represents reality.

Again, an example of bad science / statistics. First rule in statistics is to make sure your population is representative.

I therefore have no doubt that many scientific Theories exists where the underlying prove is thinner than many "Scientific consensus".
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-famous-scientific-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-wrong.php