Michael Crichton: science is not done by consensus
Renowned author and climate skeptic Michael Crichton said in 2003 there is no place for consensus in science, and he is absolutely right. You don’t do science by consensus. It isn’t a vote.
Do a Google search for the term “global warming consensus” and you’ll find more than 24,000 links (and more than 19,000,000 results without the quotations marks). The first link for “global warming consensus” is to this NASA webpage with the title “Scientific Consensus” and the following statement:
Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position.
Here’s what Michael Crichton had to say about “scientific consensus” back in 2003 when he gave a lecture at the California Institute of Technology titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming”:
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.
In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let’s review a few cases.In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever. In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no.
In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no.
In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent “skeptics” around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.
There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the “pellagra germ.” The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory.
Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called “Goldberger’s filth parties.” Nobody contracted pellagra.
The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.
Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.
And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on.
Finally, I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.
The notion of a monolithic “science,” meaning what scientists say, is pernicious and the notion of “scientific consensus” actively so. The route to knowledge is transparency in disagreement and openness in debate. The route to truth is the pluralist expression of conflicting views in which, often not as quickly as we might like, good ideas drive out bad. There is no room in this process for any notion of “scientific consensus.”
See more here: aei.org
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Geraint HUghes
| #
Which is why my experiments which are repeatable are direct proof that the “consensus” of RGHE is a complete lie.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Geraint,
Your experiments, as I remember, are done in a laboratory setting. I do not believe one can observe all “natural phenomena” in a laboratory setting. ‘aei.org’ did not write this article, some unknown human being did. But I believe that Michael Crichton wrote the following.
“Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.”
I doubt that any schoolchild, at the time, the proponents of ‘continental drift’ could see the evidence “that South America and Africa seemed to fit together rather snugly. It seems no human could ever simply observe this until someones had measured the earth surface with their instruments so that a map of the earth’s surface could be drawn. For even after this observed fact was pointed out to the geological community, this community would not accept that which was observed.
A book–THE MEANING OF IT ALL–was published in 1998. This book was a transcript of a three lecture series delivered by Richard P. Feynman in April of 1963. Feynman, in the lecture titled The Uncertainty of Science, stated: “The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea.”
Geraint, you wrote: “that the “consensus” of RGHE is a complete lie.” One cannot lie about that which one does not know. And if one does not observe the system which is the focus of one’s study, one has no evidence of whether the RGHE is “so or not.”
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
PhD
| #
I had written to Michael through a friend of his that went to medical school with him. I related a long story of a Physicist friend who had been black balled by the physics community because his theory does not support the current string theory. My friend had rederived Einstein’s General Theory but with a different basis. Einstein had written a paper that clearly showed that this new basis was fundamental. However when Einstein derived his General theory he had forgotten his earlier paper. When you rederive the General Theory using a more complete basis you find Gravity and Electromagnetism are fundamentl and present in the new equations……. also you find that the Strong and Weak nuclear forces are just Gravity and Electromagnetism at very small distances.
Reply
Moffin
| #
This wikipedia article sites a number of books on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitoelectromagnetism
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi PSI Readers,
“Worlds In Collision (1950) by Immanuel Velikovsky. “With this book Immanuel Velikovsky first presented the revolutionary results of his 10-year-long interdisciplinary research to the public, founded modern catastrophism – based on eyewitness reports by our ancestors – shook the doctrine of uniformity of geology as well as Darwin’s theory of evolution, put our view of the history of our solar system, of the Earth and of humanity on a completely new basis – and caused an uproar that is still going on today. Worlds in Collision – written in a brilliant, easily understandable and entertaining style and full to the brim with precise information – can be considered one of the most important and most challenging books in the history of science. Not without reason was this book found open on Einstein’s desk after his death. For all those who have ever wondered about the evolution of the earth, the history of mankind, traditions, religions, mythology or just the world as it is today, Worlds in Collision is an absolute MUST-READ!” (Amazon Books).
“The animosity of the U.S. scientific community toward ‘Worlds In Collision’ caused the original publisher, threatened with a boycott of its textbook division, to turn Velikovsky’s work over to a firm not involved in textbook publishing.” (The New Encyclopedia Britannica. Micropdaedia Volume X,1979)
In 1955 Richard Feynman gave a public address (titled ‘The Value of Science’ at the autumn meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. (“What Do You Care What Other People Think?”, 1988)
Given the current times, you, a reader, might try to decide if there is, or is not, a relationship between Feynman’s public 1955 address and the threatened 1950 boycott of the publication of Velikovsky’s book.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply