[brutusborn]

The critical point is that contrarians are always necessary for science. If we always ignored dissenters then we would never make any progress. Even if most are wrong, contrarians are essential.

Thus deferring to the ‘consensus’ and implicitly ignoring contrarian views stops science in its tracks.

I don’t understand what you mean in your first paragraph, and I don’t support dogmatic positions so I’m not sure why you refer to ‘dogma-contarians.’ Contrarians are usually anti-dogmatic.

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” Unreasonable contrarians are generally annoying but essential.