Outside the context of the abortion debate, best selling author Michael Crichton, M.D., a 1969 graduate of the Harvard Medical School, described the disturbing trend of "consensus science" at a Caltech lecture in 2004, a brief portion of which is excerpted below:
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.
Excerpted from Michael Crichton,"Aliens Cause Global Warming", Caltech Michelin Lecture, Jan. 17, 2003.(available online)
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