Post details: Consensus is when everyone agrees to just ignore the problems

02/12/11

Permalinkby 05:32:57 am, Categories: Commentary - OpEd, 247 words   English (CA)

Consensus is when everyone agrees to just ignore the problems

by Denyse O'Leary
ARN correspondent

From the Australian (Paul Monk, February 7, 2011), on the dangers of consensus in science:

... we are justified in being wary of foreclosing major debates based on scientific consensus, since it can be in error. Second, it shows that the way to challenge and correct scientific consensus is not through polemic or denial, but through specifying crucial variables and deductions and testing them scrupulously, in the manner of Hubble. Third, it shows that there is, nonetheless, such a thing as scientific consensus and that when handled in the manner just described, it tends to prove self-correcting. Fourth, it shows that ideally such correction will occur, as it did between Hubble and Shapley, on the basis of lucid examination of "the various possibilities". Finally, it shows that overwhelmingly human beings have always lived oblivious to the truth about the natural world and that only exacting and brilliant science has been able to discover what that truth is.
Well, foreclosing debate is a way of enshrining mediocrities and enthroning tax burdens. If that's what you want, take it and run, please.

All that said, speaking for myself, I have no idea what "the truth about the natural world is." I'm not certain of my uncertainty but am certain of one thing: Whatever the truth is, is well beyond the reach of the dullard who wouldn't know what it would be like to doubt, for example, the Darwin lobby.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.

Permalink

Pingbacks:

No Pingbacks for this post yet...

The ID Report

January 2012
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
<<  <   >  >>
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Search

Linkblog

Links - Groups and Organizations

Links - Of General Interest

  • A Brief View of Time and Those That Live There

    Don Cicchetti blogs on: Culture, Music, Faith, Intelligent Design, Guitar, Audio

    Permalink
  • A Quick Guide to Sequenced Genomes Permalink
  • ARN Related Web Links Permalink
  • Creation/Evolution Quotes

    Australian biologist Stephen E. Jones maintains one of the best origins "quote" databases around. He is meticulous about accuracy and working from original sources.

    Permalink
  • CreationEvolutionDesign

    Most guys going through midlife crisis buy a convertible. Austrialian Stephen E. Jones went back to college to get a biology degree and is now a proponent of ID and common ancestry.

    Permalink
  • Darwinian Fairytales by David Stove

    Complete zipped downloadable pdf copy of David Stove's devastating, and yet hard-to-find, critique of neo-Darwinism entitled "Darwinian Fairytales"

    Permalink
  • ID The Future

    Intelligent Design The Future is a multiple contributor weblog whose participants include the nation's leading design scientists and theorists: biochemist Michael Behe, mathematician William Dembski, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, philosophers of science Stephen Meyer, and Jay Richards, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson, molecular biologist Jonathan Wells, and science writer Jonathan Witt. Posts will focus primarily on the intellectual issues at stake in the debate over intelligent design, rather than its implications for education or public policy.

    Permalink
  • John Mark Reynolds Blog

    A Philosopher's Journey: Political and cultural reflections of John Mark N. Reynolds. Dr. Reynolds is Director of the Torrey Honors Institute at
    Biola University.

    Permalink
  • NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day Permalink

Misc

Syndicate this blog XML

What is RSS?

powered by
b2evolution