[glenstein]

I'm not sure I understand where you're seeing a conflation? I promise you that I was already familiar with the notions of objective and consensus as you described them.

I acknowledge that these are distinct concepts, but there's nothing in what I said above where I'm equating them. At least on charitable interpretation.

I'm also not sure what I agree with much or any of your supplementary analysis. Just to pick one example, I don't think our confidence in the measurement of the Higgs Boson is in any way contaminated by the fact that the consensus on it exists within a self-selected academic community, or that it fails to sufficiently sample the global population.