Michael Egnor: Don’t Confuse Scientific Consensus with Science
On this episode of ID the Future out of the vault, host Emily Kurlinski talks with Michael Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at Stony Brook University, about the dire warnings, stretching back at least to Thomas Malthus near the turn of the nineteenth century, that overpopulation would lead to starvation and civilizational ruin. Egnor discusses this and other scientific claims once widely embraced by scientific experts and later shown to be off base. The lesson, Egnor says, is that when someone tells you to believe something simply because it’s “the scientific consensus,” reserve judgment. Consensus, says Egnor, is “a political concept, not a scientific one.” And when much of the scientific community is held captive by a dogmatic adherence to materialism, any claimed consensus is all the more to be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.
Dig Deeper
- Read the article that inspired this podcast: Apocalypse Now: More Things Scientists Would Like You To Forget
- Watch comedian Evan Sayet describe scientific consensus as “a refuge for scoundrels:”