Philosopher Tries to Defend the Big Science Consensus

A philosophy of science professor says we should
believe what Big Science says. Are his reasons sound?

“The Conversation” website is normally a parade of science professors espousing far-left, evolutionary beliefs. This past week they posted an essay by a philosophy of science professor. He agrees there are many reasons not to trust what science says. But then he tries to explain why we should trust science anyway.

Why should we trust science? Because it doesn’t trust itself  (The Conversation, 18 Sept 2022). John Wright bills himself as an Adjunct Research Fellow in Philosophy at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia and “a philosopher with a focus on the philosophy of science.” His quizzical headline does not suggest much confidence in what he is about to prove: ‘we should trust science because it doesn’t trust itself.’ Say a chap calls to you as you stand poised on a dock, deciding whether to jump into a lake. “Go ahead!” he says. “Trust me. I don’t trust myself.” Would you take the plunge?

Wright lists many good reasons not to trust scientists:

• There is “the question of whether what a scientist says is, in fact, the truth.”
• We know that “scientists are just humans and remain prone to making mistakes.”
• History shows that “what scientists believed in the past has often later turned out to be false.”
• Skeptics and scientists can both claim that the evidence is on their side.
• Scientists and their critics can argue that their positions are more logical.
• We should not “uncritically accept everything scientists say.”
• There are disputes over what is the “scientific method.”

And yet Wright argues that citizens should accept the scientific “consensus” on matters such as global warming and Covid vaccines – this after pointing out that “there were times in history when people thought mercury could treat syphilis, and that the bumps on a person’s skull could reveal their character traits.”

To support his view, John only refers to a couple of philosophers of science out of dozens he could have selected. He obliquely mentions “other writers in the field” without naming any.

1. Karl Popper (1902-1994), is mostly remembered for his “falsification” criterion.

For Popper, at the core of the scientific method is the attempt to refute or disprove theories, which is called the “falsification principle”. If scientists have not been able to refute a theory over a long period of time, despite their best efforts, then in Popper’s terminology the theory has been “corroborated”.

This suggests a possible answer to the question of why we ought to trust what scientists tell us. It is because, despite their best efforts, they have not been able to disprove the idea they are telling us is true.

2. Naomi Oreskes (b. 1958), historian of science at Harvard. Oreskes is a Popperian, “but also emphasises the social and consensual element of scientific practice.”

For Oreskes, we have reason to trust science because, or to the extent that, there is a consensus among the (relevant) scientific community that a particular claim is true – wherein that same scientific community has done their best to disprove it, and failed.

Oreskes’ criterion, however, depends on the effectiveness of peer review, the quality of experimental tests to disprove a theory, and agreement on how many tests are needed to falsify it. Wright uncritically quotes the statistic that “more than 99% of the relevant scientific community” accepts the theory of man-caused global warming (bandwagon). What started as a mere hypothesis about CO₂ potentially causing global warming, and rising due to human activity, he says, “successfully passed testing for more than a hundred years, and has now gained near-universal acceptance.”

Wright’s Bottom Line

This is why the public should believe the scientific consensus, in Wright’s conclusion.

This does not necessarily mean we ought to uncritically accept everything scientists say. There is of course a difference between a single isolated scientist or small group saying something, and there being a consensus within the scientific community that something is true.

And, of course, for a variety of reasons – some practical, some financial, some otherwise – scientists may not have done their best to refute some idea. And even if scientists have repeatedly tried, but failed, to refute a given theory, the history of science suggests at some point in the future it may still turn out to be false when new evidence comes to light.

So when should we trust science? The view that seems to emerge from Popper, Oreskes and other writers in the field is we have good, but fallible, reason to trust what scientists say when, despite their own best efforts to disprove an idea, there remains a consensus that it is true.

As usual, there is no conversation at The Conversation. No one has critiqued this particular essay a week after it was posted.

Are you convinced by John Wright? Are you going to install solar panels on your roof, buy an electric car, lower your standard of living, pay higher taxes, pay more for gas and goods because of inflation, and vote for globalist/leftist politicians whose #1 political issue is climate change, simply because a “scientific consensus” believes we should? (See 12 Sept 2022.)

Recall that the scientific consensus also believes in Darwinian evolution so strongly that they insist it is right for skeptics to be censored and kept out of PhD programs. And regarding Covid vaccines, the truth is slowly leaking out that Big Pharma’s profit motives overlooked safety concerns, which were treated as “conspiracy theories” by Big Science and Big Media but are now coming to light as real. Politicians trusted “the scientific consensus” and locked down whole states, ruining businesses, warping children’s educational progress, and leading many teens and young adults to depression, drugs and suicide. As for global warming, Wright should evaluate the journal papers we report on that show deep and serious flaws in the inputs to climate models, and factors that the IPCC failed to include in their conclusions (e.g., 11 June 2022).

There are numerous problems with Wright’s analysis:

• The problem of groupthink he overlooked.
  
• He overlooked flaws in the peer review system.
• Follow the Money: funding sources favor politically favorable outcomes.
• The “publish or perish” situation in academia: scientists go along to get along.
• Perverse incentives exist within academia and Big Science (17 July 2021).
  
• The overwhelming Leftist/Democrat bias within academia discourages critical thinking.
  
• Censorship of critical voices is rampant.
  
• Big Media colludes with Big Science.
• Wright ignores the shake-up in philosophy of science beginning with Kuhn.
• The difficulty of working outside the current paradigm discourages mavericks.
  
• The maverick who goes against the consensus can be right (many examples in the history of science).
• Wright ignores moral values that are required for science, e.g., integrity, courage.
• He treats “science” like a big tent, as if all sciences are equally empirical.*
• Historical science is very different from observational science. You can’t repeat history.
  
• Many recent examples of “consensus science” have been overturned.
• More? Leave a comment.

*Not all sciences are equally valid. Should political science or social science be given the same trust as lab chemistry? C.S. Lewis said, “Strictly speaking, there is, I confess, no such thing as ‘modern science’. There are only particular sciences, all in a stage of rapid change, and sometimes inconsistent with one another.”