It took most of mankind’s existence to develop our most valuable tool for understanding the physical world and shaping it to meet our needs: the scientific method.
The key to its widespread use, beginning in the 17th century, was the growing freedom to pursue truth objectively, instead of submitting to the dogmas of church or state.
Today, however, we risk moving backward. Science is under attack by self-serving interest groups that reject objective inquiry because it frequently fails to produce politically desired results. A prime example is the failure of man-made global warming advocates to prove their case scientifically, but the attack covers many other issues as well.
One obvious abuse of the scientific process is the manner in which global-warming advocates have substituted consensus for verifiable proof. Many environmentalists insist that the issue is “settled” because large numbers of scientists agree with them.
However, that proves nothing. As the late science novelist Michael Crichton said in a 2003 speech: “Let’s be clear: The work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable.”
“The greatest scientists in history,” Crichton observed, “are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.”
A clear example of the pitfalls of using consensus to determine truth is the once universally held belief that ulcers were caused by stress — accepted by essentially every doctor, medical researcher, hospital, medical school, medical textbook, medical journal and pharmaceutical company in the world.
All of them were wrong. Two Australian scientists won the 2006 Nobel Prize for proving that up to 90 percent of peptic ulcers are caused instead by bacteria.
Read more: http://p.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/8/when-consensus-trumps-science/#ixzz2PttkR6QL
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