Comment by tsimionescu

14 hours ago

If you want to know what the science says on some topic, you have exactly two valid options:

1. Become an expert in said topic, reading the broad literature, becoming familiar with points and counterpoints, figuring out how research actually works in the field by contributing some papers of your own, and forming your own personal informed opinion on the preponderance of the evidence.

2. Look at the experts' consensus on said topic

Of course, you have other options. A popular one is to adopt the view of one expert in the field that you happen to like, who may or may not accept the consensus view - but this is far more arbitrary than 1 or 2.

4 comments

tsimionescu

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bluGill  5 hours ago

If you are not in the field, consensus is often almost impossible to figure out. Remember what gets published is things that are controversial. Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it. Thus, if you're searching for something, you may not actually find the consensus if you're looking, and so the study is hard when you're not already an expert.

  • thaumasiotes  1 hour ago

    > Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it.

    Not really; generally consensus ideas will be mentioned in passing while discussing something else. You can get a strong sense of the consensus that way.

    For example, I bought several textbooks on early Mesopotamian history, which taught me that Marxism enjoys a strong consensus in that field. And it's not even relevant to the field!

b112  13 hours ago

As a Canadian I love the US, think of them as family, but also view them as some sort of relative which has lost their senses. Before most recent times, we'd sadly shake our heads, as this relative does weird things, yet still hope for the best for them. Yet while rambling blathers about invading Canada and compelling 51st statehood would be fondly tolerated in grandpa, not so much for a nation with a massive army and a joy in using it.

So I purpose we strengthen another aspect of American "democracy" that Canadians find amusing, the concept of "hiring people for popularity not competency". Americans, especially at the local level, vote for judges, police chiefs, even dog-catchers, so why not a local scientist! Rather than 1 or 2, we can conjoin this concept with your third option, yet with the officiousness that only a vote can provide!

Each municipality can have a local head scientist, which will proclaim what scientific fact is correct. People can vote on such candidates, and their platform of scientifically correct "things" during election time.

It will all work out very well for them I'm sure, and hopefully, with science thus democratized, perhaps they will be less of a threat over time.

(Sorry, I don't know why your comment made this pop into my head)