Science Consensus Quotes & Sayings

The oil industry has outpaced the building of a public consensus of the implications of climate science. — Al Gore

I'm not a specialist in the science but I have followed it fairly closely and it seems to me that there is among the experts a clear consensus that potential climate change is something to worry about. — Martin Rees

Toward the end of his book, Miller explains his need to unite science and religion: science does not explain the meaning and purpose of life. That may be, but why should we assume religion explains such things any better? Just because religion attempts to answer such questions does not mean its answers are correct. And such answers never seem to achieve any consensus. What is the meaning of life? Your answer is as good as mine
or just as bad. — G.M. Jackson

The price of these failures has been a loss of moral consensus, a greater sense of helplessness about the human condition ... The intellectual solution to the first dilemma can be achieved by a deeper and more courageous examination of human nature that combines the findings of biology with those of the social sciences. — E. O. Wilson

All humanity needs, is to be reminded that there has always existed a human consensus on all common human needs and desires (extremely long life in perfect health, abundance, well-being), and that now, transgressing the religious option, he has achieved the scientific option of working for all of them, and for much more.
His rationality, guided by both his ambition and inspiration, will do the rest.

WHATEVER RELIGION PROMISES, SCIENCE WILL DELIVER. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

The science is settled; it's not even a consensus, it is a unanimity that human life begins at conception. — Marco Rubio

We must start with scientific fundamentals, and that means with the data of experiments and not with assumed axioms predicated only upon the misleading nature of that which only superficially seems to be obvious. It is the consensus of great scientists that science is the attempt to set in order the facts of experience. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Pseudoscience is almost always recognizable from a distance, and easy to confirm on close examination. Science is, however, not immune from hubris, and bad science can be tougher to spot. Those of us who make a living from science or science media must display scientific integrity. We must constantly test our assumptions and fight the siren song of consensus when our data tells us to be contrarian. We must remain independent of political or religious bias in evaluating our work. We must admit when we are wrong, and remain willing to evolve when verifiable data demands change. We must admit when we are uncertain, remain humble in advances, and offer courageous and independent advice grounded in science. — K. Lee Lerner

For all its beauty, honesty, and effectiveness at improving the human condition, science demands a terrible price - that we accept what experiments tell us about the universe, whether we like it or not. It's about consensus and teamwork and respectful critical argument, working with, and through, natural law. It requires that we utter, frequently, those hateful words - 'I might be wrong.' — David Brin

The challenge for physics is deriving the consensus reality from the external reality, and the challenge for cognitive science is to derive the internal reality from the consensus reality. — Max Tegmark

It is my opinion that education is a key component to peace and progress. Despite their arrogant claims to have all the answers, world religions cannot account for recent insights and discoveries about the natural world and human history. In this, the most tantalizing argument against religious faith comes forth in the way of science and reason. An ever-growing scientific consensus has resulted in the ever-shrinking populous of religious relevance. — Tommy Rodriguez

Chinese commentaries stress the opportunity that the investments and aid they offer presents to developing countries to avoid the hazards of reliance on Western dominated financial institutions: austerity programs that call for severe cuts in state-subsidized social welfare, deregulation of state-owned facilities, trade liberalization, and an open door for multinational corporation investment. — Melvin Gurtov

Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. — Michael Crichton

Science is not about consensus, and consensus is not science. — Burt Rutan

Until now, human organization could only be based upon something negative which could not be conquered: SCARCITY, and something false: PERSONAL ACCOUNTABILITY... No wonder instead of producing stability, it produced the exact opposite.
The current human organization based upon dealing with the consequences of scarcity and being considered responsible for our individual characteristics which we could never have chosen (our nature, our nurture, our "soul", and all the choices they engender), will always lead to an irrational, hence unstable human organization causing perpetual conflicts, which is no organization at all.

Today, we have the luxury to initiate a rational self-organization based upon two positives:
-our HUMAN CONSENSUS; our common desires shared by all, and
-the SCIENTIFIC PROJECT to achieve them. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. — Michael Crichton

Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change "skeptics" or "deniers," these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists ... — David Suzuki

For the moment, machines able to 'think' in anything approaching a human sense remain science-fiction. How we should prepare for their potential emergence, however, is a deeply unsettling question - not least because intelligent machines seem considerably more achievable than any consensus around their programming or consequences. — Tom Chatfield

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. — Michael Crichton

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern. — Daniel Dennett

It's striking that so many of the great economic initiatives of the Clinton presidency led eventually to catastrophe. But what really makes this story poisonous is that liberals by and large convinced themselves for many years that nothing had gone wrong at all. Everything Clinton's team had done was an act of professional-class consensus. Because most of the fuses lit by Clinton and Co. didn't actually detonate until after he had left office - and by then some science-denying Republican was in the Oval Office - they found it easy to absolve the Democrat from blame. When — Thomas Frank

The primary claim made by the IPCC and other warmists was that there was a 'consensus' among the world's scientists, but anyone familiar with science knows that it does not operate on consensus.
--Shouting from the Rooftops, Warning Signs blog, December 20, 2012 — Alan Caruba

I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. — Michael Crichton

What's a City/NGO-sponsored Neighborhood Summit, you ask? It's a trumped-up group of hand-picked 'neighborhood leaders' who have been instructed in Asset Based Community Development and the Delphi Technique. Their goal? To create neighborhood associations that are managed and manipulated by facilitators who have learned 'consensus building' and are using it to further the (United Nations's Agenda 21) plans. — Rosa Koire

If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: 'Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?' From what I've seen, it's not likely. — Tim Ferriss

In thinking about these questions I have been stimulated by criticisms of the prevailing scientific world picture ... by the defenders of intelligent design. Even though writers like Michael Behe and Stephen C. Meyer are motivated at least in part by their religious beliefs, the empirical arguments they offer against the likelihood that the origin of life and its evolutionary history can be fully explained by physics and chemistry are of great interest in themselves. Another skeptic, David Berlinski, has brought out these problems vividly without reference to the design inference. Even if one is not drawn to the alternative of an explanation by the actions of a designer, the problems that these iconoclasts pose for the orthodox scientific consensus should be taken seriously. They do not deserve the scorn with which they are commonly met. It is manifestly unfair. — Thomas Nagel

Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true. — Orson Scott Card

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. — Michael Crichton

As a geologist, I love Earth observations, but it is ridiculous to tie this objective to a 'consensus' that humans are causing global warming when human experience, geologic data and history, and current cooling can argue otherwise. 'Consensus,' as many have said, merely represents the absence of definitive science. You know as well as I, the 'global warming scare' is being used as a political tool to increase government control over American lives, incomes and decision making. — Harrison Schmitt

The manufactured consensus of the IPCC has had the unintended consequences of distorting the science, elevating the voices of scientists that dispute the consensus, and motivating actions by the consensus scientists and their supporters that have diminished the public's trust in the IPCC. — Judith Curry

The cognitive science's challenge is to link our consensus reality to our internal reality, but physics' challenge is to link our consensus reality to our external reality. — Max Tegmark

This new consensus seemed so compelling that Ernst Mayr, the dean of modern Darwinians, opened the ashcan of history for a deposit of Geoffrey's ideas about anatomical unity. — Stephen Jay Gould

One of the most interesting histories of what comes of rejecting science we may see in Islam, which in the beginning received, accepted, and even developed the classical legacy. For some five or six rich centuries there is an impressive Islamic record of scientific thought, experiment, and research, particularly in medicine. But then, alas! the authority of the general community, the Sunna, the consensus - which Mohammed the Prophet had declared would always be right - cracked down. The Word of God in the Koran was the only source and vehicle of truth. Scientific thought led to 'loss of belief in the origin of the world and in the Creator.' And so it was that, just when the light of Greek learning was beginning to be carried from Islam to Europe - from circa 1100 onward - Islamic science and medicine came to a standstill and went dead ... — Joseph Campbell

Science isn't done by consensus. It's done by rigorous testing. — Orson Scott Card

In any event, it has never been true that we ignore mainstream science; and anyone who reads AEI publications closely can see that we are not 'skeptics' about warming. It is possible to accept the general consensus about the existence of global warming while having valid questions about the extent of warming, the consequences of warming, and the appropriate responses. — Steven F. Hayward

The Bible presents God as above, beyond, and outside the experiences of mortal man. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and His ways are past finding out. God cannot be known by human intellect or reason, except through the new birth. Belief in God is not the product of seeing and knowing, but seeing and knowing are the products of believing.
Truth is revealed by God through the Scriptures-the Holy Bible. Truth is what the Bible declares, and not what the masses believe or what is the consensus. Reason, science, experience have nothing to do with truth. The test of truth is "thus saith the Lord. — Roger McIntyre