[CWuestefeld]

in practice is that the consensus is very frequently wrong

I'd make that statement even stronger: the consensus is almost certainly wrong. The variables are just in what manner it's wrong, and to what degree.

It's not all a revolutionary shift to a Copernican cosmos. Most things we know pretty well today, but ought to fully expect to have tweaked tomorrow. The cliche example is of Newtonian dynamics being improved by Einstein, which is still being refined through quantum mechanics, etc.