cross post: the dangerous illusion of scientific consensus
jay and rav kick off a new series on this vital topic.
i tried cross posting this earlier and something seems to have gone wrong witht he email send, so i’m going to post it this way:
“the science is settled”
“do not do your own work”
“trust the experts”
common refrains, but exhortations that are not only unenlightened, but anti-enlightenment.
science is never settled.
“just trust the salesman or car manufacturer about which automobile to buy and what to pay?” you’d laugh them out of the room
yet somehow we are to accept this for every policy hobbyhorse the credentialed classes trot out?
no.
so jay bhattacharya and rav arora are going to take this on.
jay is a friend, a gatopal™ and a brave and incisive thinker on these topics.
tune in.
this is going to be good.
“The project of science calls for rigor, humility, and open discussion. The pandemic has revealed the stunning magnitude of the political and institutional capture of science. For this reason, both of us — Rav and Jay — are launching a podcast devoted to investigating the concoction of pseudo-consensus in science and its ramifications for our society.”
In light this piece and many others by gato on the failure of our so-called experts, I thought some here might be interested in my new book, The Treason of the Experts: Covid and the Credentialed Class, just published by Brownstone.
For those wanting to know more about me or the book here are some links:
Forward The Treason of the Experts: Covid and the Credentialed Class. by Jeffrey Tucker:
https://brownstone.org/articles/treason-of-the-experts-foreword/
Author’s Introduction (scroll down after cover page and forward)
https://www.amazon.com/Treason-Experts-Covid-Credentialed-Class/dp/1630695882?asin=1630695882&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1
Here I am discussing the book recently with Jan Jekielek on the American Thought Leaders program
https://ept.ms/44ITpzA
Here is my personal website
https://www.thomassharrington.com/
The book is available at:
https://www.amazon.com/Treason-Experts-Covid-Credentialed-Class/dp/1630695882
https://www.abebooks.com/9781630695880/Treason-Experts-Covid-Credentialed-Class-1630695882/plp
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/noresults/the-treason-of-the-experts-jeffrey-tucker/1143418289
"Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatsoever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, required 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."
~ Michael Crichton (1942-2008)