“An important corollary is that scientists also need to be prepared to go out and defend their findings to the public.”
If public defense is needed it’s usually because it isn’t science that’s in need of defense but rather it’s a narrative in need of defense. Science gave us the atom bomb. The public was convinced after the first detonation. Science is about demonstration not hand waving and just-so stories.
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.
—Michael Crichton, Aliens cause Global Warming [January 17, 2003 speech at the California Institute of Technology]