Science is not fake news

The key word here is "best". The consensus isn't, and shouldn't, claim to be the Absolute Truth. Such a thing may well not even exist. All it can claim is to be the best possible approximation to such a truth given the current state of the understanding of the evidence at any time. That can and frequently does change, such that you get some people lambasting scientists for not being able to make up their minds, while others insist that they're all dogmatic and never change their minds at all. Or worse, they say that when they do shift, they rewrite history so it looks like everything was fine and that they were ignoring legitimate criticism.

In reality, what usually happens is that contrarians remain contrarian because their arguments simply lack sufficient power. If and when they accumulate more evidence, the consensus position shifts. What you have to remember is that there's usually a plethora of available contrarian positions to choose from, a sort of "dial a theory" if you like. This results in a survivorship bias when the consensus changes, when in fact the new position was previously rejected for what were, at the time, very good reasons.

https://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2016/07/they-said-i-was-maaaaad.html
http://astrorhysy.blogspot.com/2015/06/consensus-and-conspiracy.html


You may be extremely intelligent and capable in a whole slew of ways, but you can immediately recognize the limits to your own knowledge and expertise. There are some things you know extremely well; possibly as well as the top few dozen people on Earth know it. But when it comes to most issues, there are people who have far greater levels of knowledge and expertise than you do.

This isn't a failing on your part, mind you. This is a result of the fact that, as human beings, we only get one life to live. However we've spent our time in this world — whatever we've studied, practiced, worked on, researched, etc. — that's where our greatest expertise lies. And this extends beyond ourselves as well: the expertise of others, particularly when we're lacking in that expertise, is something we need to rely on when we're out of our depths.

Which is why it's so dangerous and delusional to proclaim that you, when you're a non-expert, are better equipped to assess an expertise-requiring problem than the experts themselves.

You are not.

That doesn't mean the experts are always right. That doesn't mean there aren't frauds, charlatans, fools, cronies, and unimaginitive followers among the experts. That doesn't mean that people aren't corrupt, and it doesn't mean that the expert consensus won't change as more and better data comes in.

But that's why we not only have experts, it's why we have the enterprise of science.


Of course, that's not to say that you aren't allowed to question the experts or that they're entitled to pronounce judgement upon you. It's more a case of "you can ignore them if you like, but it's your own bloody fault if you get it wrong". Which you are far, far more likely to do than if you'd just accepted the consensus view. Doesn't mean you can't have hobbies or that amateurs can't be valuable, but if you actually want to make progress, it's worth considering the mainstream ideas first. Lots of people seem to think it's fine to debunk things they've never actually looked into in the slightest.

One of my favourite pieces on assessing credibility [REPLACE LINK !]:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+RhysTaylorRhysy/posts/ExUtrBorfWs


https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/11/29/science-is-not-fake-news/