[triceratops]

"If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus."

Appears to contradict

"What is relevant is reproducible results."

Aren't reproducible results a form of consensus?

[ColanR]

> Aren't reproducible results a form of consensus?

Not in the least. "Reproducible results" represents the technical and methodological ability to confirm that an effect is real. "Consensus" is whether a political body is willing to admit that the effect is real.

And we all know politics finds truth to be...

[Shikadi]

I think this is a semantic argument... If 100 independent scientists reproduce results, those results themselves are a scientific consensus, are they not?

[craftinator]

Yes, at that point the political consensus adopts the results of rigorous scientific testing as it's new bling

[ColanR]

Insofar as it's a semantic argument, it's irrelevant.

> If 100 independent scientists reproduce results, those results themselves are a scientific consensus

Not in any sense that's relevant to the discovery of new information or its verification.

[jeffdavis]

Maybe in some degenerate form of consensus, like consensus on raw observations. If one person sees a rise in temperature during a reaction, someone else can say "nuh-uh, la la la".

Other forms of scientific disagreement happen, but those disagreements imply different predictions, and can be resolved with more experiments.

Science is a process that bootstraps broad agreements (scientific laws) from very tiny agreements (observations). The fact that a broad agreement (consensus) exists carries no weight if one lone wacky scientist can show reproducible observations that contradict it.