Scientific consensus and frontier subject areas

From WikiSynergy

A scientific consensus is the collective judgment of scientists in any given field which is taught and researched at the college or university level. The scientific consensus is intrinsically a matter of general agreement among experts. It should be stressed for the purposes of frontier thought that scientific consensus is not derived from what most scientists believe, and it is not derived from inexpert opinion.

In many frontier subjects, there is no scientific consensus, because the level of academic acceptance is so low that there are no experts within the academic establishment. There is thus no formal structure for deciding which parts of the subject are properly supported by evidence: for instance, there is no peer review process. Scientists who speak out about such subjects, particularly where they have not deeply studied the field, do not speak as scientists except where their own field of expertise touches on the frontier subject. And in such cases they can only be taken seriously to the extent that they have mastered the frontier subject. Because scientists generally only study those fields which make good career choices and which they feel are most promising (likely to be fruitful areas of research), it often happens that no scientists are experts on a given frontier subject. In such a situation, the stage is set for scientists who speak strongly against subjects where they have little or no expertise, thus becoming pseudoskeptics.

[edit] References