I was thinking about this in terms of the network effect and decision-making, and realized that "consensus" is one of those words that has really been abused by the scientific establishment for a long time to maintain control over accepted dogma. In the purest sense, consensus doesn't mean a majority or even a "super majority" like wikipedia science articles make it sound. A consensus theoretically means everyone - but practically it's everyone who matters. By definition, dissidents are removed from the quorum - either forcefully or by giving up. So if you have 90 scientists who agree on a finding and 10 who disagree, that's not consensus. Consensus is reached when the 10 dissidents are kicked out of the room. Then you have consensus among everyone who is left. In practice this is accomplished by the establishment ghosting the people who disagree. No more funding for you. Or worse if you keep pushing the issue.

And clearly this example shows you don't even need a majority. If 2 of the 100 get together and decide the consensus - and they have a louder voice than everyone else - that's the consensus. The other 98 didn't get a vote or didn't bother to speak up. The dissidents can get together and form their own consensus, but if they don't have a voice in establishment (academia, journals, media) then nobody cares.

I was thinking about this in terms of the network effect and decision-making, and realized that "consensus" is one of those words that has really been abused by the scientific establishment for a long time to maintain control over accepted dogma. In the purest sense, consensus doesn't mean a majority or even a "super majority" like wikipedia science articles make it sound. A consensus means everyone who matters. By definition, dissidents are removed from the quorum - either forcefully or by giving up. So if you have 90 scientists who agree on a finding and 10 who disagree, that's not consensus. Consensus is reached when the 10 dissidents are kicked out of the room. Then you have consensus among everyone who is left. In practice this is accomplished by the establishment ghosting the people who disagree. No more funding for you. Or worse if you keep pushing the issue.

And clearly this example shows you don't even need a majority. If 2 of the 100 get together and decide the consensus - and they have a louder voice than everyone else - that's the consensus. The other 98 didn't get a vote or didn't bother to speak up. The dissidents can get together and form their own consensus, but if they don't have a voice in establishment (academia, journals, media) then nobody cares.