Believing in experts

[Dill]

(07-03-2023, 03:51 PM)Leon Wrote: you said this right

Anyway, my rule of thumb is consensus. What is the majority of the literature saying? 

you know consesus has been wrong many time right. you know the majority has been very wrong before right. but hey keep on using that as your rule. no way to go wrong with that rule right? 

I wonder if you may be confusing political consensus with scientific.

Democracy is based upon majority rule. Sure it can be wrong, especially when people are uniformed about policy matters.

Scientific consensus is rather different. For scientists it is a reflection of cumulative research at any given moment. 
It may change as more becomes known, but it is not drawn from a pool of uninformed. Rather the opposite.

But it would not be especially rational to go against scientific consensus at any given moment just because it has changed or "been wrong" at some point in the past. 

It is a principle of our current civilization that science produces the most effective knowledge, from saving lives to building roads to exploring space.
That's why so many want to draw upon it for health policy.

You, on the other hand, think it is not wise to defer to a consensus of the deeply informed about health topics. 

That consensus is somehow not worthy of public trust. So instead you defer to . . . who or what exactly?