Quotes About Consensus

Science is not there for you to cherry pick ... You can decide whether or not to believe in it but that doesn't change the reality of an emergent scientific truth.

Our test of truth is a reference to either a present or imagined future majority in favour of our view.

He'd realized the importance of that, of making sure everybody was in on every decision and being on the same page aesthetically with him—and behind the sentiment of the song.

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.

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 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.

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough.

After all, the trouble with what the scientists said was that they were always saying something different. This year one idea, next year something else. Scientific opinion was ever changing

Everyone will think the same thing at the same time. Global

He argued that science is social in its very essence in the ways in which skills, standards, and tacit understandings are transmitted from person to person in an institutional system in which members act freely but work within mutual consensus.

It's not really a popular consensus to sing Sinatra - which I love! And I just think it's so cool that he disliked rock n' roll so much.

The trouble for lots of politicians is they worry so much about everybody liking every single thing that they do.

published in 1980, John McPhee noted that even then one American geologist in eight still didn't believe in plate tectonics. Today

At all events, thanks to the work of Clair Patterson, by 1953 the Earth at last had an age everyone could agree on.

politics is the art of the compromise

A lie doesn't become truth, wrong doesn't become right, and evil doesn't become good, just because it's accepted by a majority.

Il apparaît en effet que les masses ont tort, et les individus toujours raison.

It never occurred to me to say no

We can't stick together if we're going to different places," CeeCee said.

I like to let them talk things out, but fact isn't a democratic process; if a thing isn't true it isn't true, even if everybody votes that it is.

fact isn't a democratic process; if a thing isn't true it isn't true, even if everybody votes that it is.

After all, what is truth but the consensus of memories of reliable witnesses?