Isn’t it the case that “consensus” in the sciences is just a shorthand for “we agree that this is most likely to be true”?
If I were conversing with a scientist and I asked about possibility x, and they disagreed with it for the reason that “the consensus is…”, I would assume that they are not saying possibility x is wrong, but rather that they would need really good evidence to agree that x is correct.
Isn’t it the case that “consensus” in the sciences is just a shorthand for “we agree that this is most likely to be true”?
If I were conversing with a scientist and I asked about possibility x, and they disagreed with it for the reason that “the consensus is…”, I would assume that they are not saying possibility x is wrong, but rather that they would need really good evidence to agree that x is correct.