Article The weaponization of "scientific consensus"

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https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the...-consensus

EXCERPT: . . . The notion of consensus-as-truth has been operationalized in various forms: journalistic “fact checkers,” academic “misinformation” researchers, and content moderation on social media platforms. The practical effect is the creation of self-appointed arbiters of truth — journalists, academics, social media platforms, and even governments — who render judgments on acceptable and unacceptable speech according to conformance with an acceptable view.

There are many problems with the notion of consensus-as-truth and the (self)appointment of misinformation police to regulate discourse, whether of the public or, as in the case of the California law, of experts themselves.

A scientific consensus is not a single view, but a distribution of views. Almost 20 years ago I participated in an exchange in Science with Naomi Oreskes on this point. Professor Oreskes shot to fame by publishing a commentary that argued that the consensus on climate change was universal, based on a review of 928 papers. Oreskes argument quickly moved from characterizing science to a call for political action, based on the asserted universal consensus.

I responded by arguing that a consensus is not a single thing, but a distribution, and policy should be robust to that distribution... (MORE - details)

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Pielke is clearly not the honest broker he claims to be. Taking the reader with him he neatly segues from climate change where the evidence is freely available to a possible leak of Covid-19 from Wuhan where any evidence of a leak will have been deliberately destroyed and any surviving witnesses from the time are more likely to be motivated by a desire to avoid the attentions of a brutal regime than any particular desire tell the truth.
Neat!
Is the evidence for and against anthropic global warming biased by a desire to avoid life in a hard labour camp? I really don't think so. In fairness Pielke is probably very successful as an influencer in the shitferbrains community - in fairness that doesn't make him right - or indeed wrong - it is what it is.