When to doubt a scientific consensus1 min read

Here’s the abbreviated list from a good article from The American Enterprise Institute entitled When to Doubt a Scientific Consensus. You can also hear an interview with the author on the subject of global climate change below.

1. When different claims get bundled together.
2. When ad hominem attacks against dissenters predominate.
3. When scientists are pressured to toe the party line.
4. When publishing and peer review in the discipline is cliquish.
5. When dissenting opinions are excluded from the relevant peer-reviewed literature not because of weak evidence or bad arguments but as part of a strategy to marginalize dissent.
6. When the actual peer-reviewed literature is misrepresented.
7. When consensus is declared hurriedly or before it even exists.
8. When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus.
9. When ‘scientists say’ or ‘science says’ is a common locution.
10. When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies.
11. When the ‘consensus’ is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible.
12. When we keep being told that there’s a scientific consensus.