Is It Ever Warranted to Doubt a Scientific “Consensus”

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

5 • 791 Ratings

🗓️ 6 April 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, shares a remarkable article by Dr. Jay W. Richards titled, “When to Doubt a Scientific ‘Consensus.’” Richards explains, “Anyone who has studied the history of science knows that scientists are not immune to the non-rational dynamics of the herd.” Jay goes on to offer a twelve-point “checklist to decide when you can, even should, doubt a scientific ‘consensus,’ whatever the subject. One of these signs may be enough to give pause. If they start to pile up, then it’s wise to be leery.”

See Jay Richards, “Politics Disguised as Science: When to Doubt a Scientific ‘Consensus,’” The Stream, April 19, 2017, https://stream.org/doubt-scientific-consensus/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Hank Hanegraff, president of the Christian Research Institute, and host of the Bible Inserman broadcast broadcast with another Hank Unplugged short.
0:23.7	This one is based on a delicious article by Jay Richards, who I've had on the Hank Unplugged
0:34.9	podcast, a number of times.
0:38.2	He wrote the piece for the American.
0:41.3	And again, he's talking about when you ought to have grave doubts about scientific consensus.
0:50.1	I'm sure you can find the article on the web.
0:54.2	But I was thinking about the relevance of this article
0:58.3	because this is no small matter, particularly now, right now, today,
1:07.2	when we are energy dependent because of the alleged scientific consensus that unless we limit our dependence on fossil fuels, our planet will cease to be habitable in, well, in less now than ten years.
1:31.3	Thus, we have become a country that no longer exports energy, but rather have become energy dependent.
1:48.1	The question is this.
1:51.6	Is this consensus a reality?
1:56.4	Or is it a function of manipulating data in order to exaggerate the premise?
2:03.0	Is it solid evidence or perhaps something more sinister?
2:10.6	What economists call stakeholder interests and incentives.
2:17.0	The kinds of interests and incentives that affect the research of academics in the humanities
2:24.2	no less and perhaps even more than those in the sciences.
2:30.5	Perhaps, as has been well said, it has to do with what psychologists call motivated blindness,
2:39.3	a kind of blindness that inhibits the ability to perceive, well, inconvenient data.
2:50.5	Perhaps, and this is very likely,
2:55.9	it is a result of shoddy research by a number of university professors
3:00.6	that are repeated over and over again odnosium on infinitum by journalists.
	...

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