Should know better.
In an article defending consensus science, physicist Ethan Siegel opines,
Think about evolution, for example. Many people still rally against it, claiming that it’s impossible. Yet evolution was the consensus position that led to the discovery of genetics, and genetics itself was the consensus that allowed us to discover DNA, the “code” behind genetics, inherited traits and evolution.
Actually, modern genetics started with Gregor Mendel who was as oblivious to Darwin’s work as Darwin was to his.
The triumph of Darwinism has distorted genetics, such that horizontal gene transfer, epigenetics, and convergence were for many decades routinely underresearched. Scientists scrambled for evidence of the great wonders of accumulated information supposedly performed by Darwin’s natural selection acting on random mutation (Darwinism). That’s where the accolades and the prizes were.
Darwin’s great wonders are just not there. But that’s no deterrent to the pursuit, and won’t be, probably until well into the next century. Some stories are so good that they do not have to be fact-based. They can fly in the face of what is known about information and still can be propped up by rhetoric alone.
Indeed, if what you want is a good facts-optional story, the frenzied a-crock-alypses of consensus science, whether global winter or global warming to take just one example, are much more helpful than a range of findings-based interpretation.
Anyway, consensus science only becomes a big issue when there is something wrong with the science.
The world is full of physicists who do not actually know what the problems with Darwinian evolution (the only one they know anything about) actually are. And don’t want to know. It’s easier just to defend it without finding out.
Follow UD News at Twitter!
Search Uncommon Descent for similar topics, under the Donate button.