Be it global warming, COVID shots, Darwinian evolution, neuroscience or even physics, there is no such thing as “settled science.” The late great physicist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) agreed. He wrote:

Any physical theory is always provisional. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.

Stephen Hawking, A brief history of time: from big bang to black holes. Random House, 2009.

If that is true even for physical theories, Hawking’s claim certainly applies to softer sciences like neuroscience, epidemiology, climate change and evolution.

Those who claim a science is settled are doing so on faith

Mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) said there is a “God-shaped vacuum” in every person. Those who believe that there is such a thing as settled science are members of the Church of Scientism. Some are filling their God-shaped vacuum with a belief in science.

That’s one of the reasons I like being an engineer. Scientists embrace a theory, place it on a throne and worship her like a queen. Engineers make the queen step down from the throne and scrub the floor. And if she doesn’t work, we fire her.

Some physical theories are better supported by evidence than others. Drop a pencil, and you observe direct evidence supporting the theory of gravity.

Everyone believes in gravity, right? Yet the Newtonian model of gravity as action at a distance was shown by Einstein to be caused by spacetime curvature. Scientists are still exploring relativistic gravity waves. Questioning models and finding alternate or deeper truths is the beginning of scientific progress.

What about consensus science?

If the term “settled science” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms, a more meaningful phrase is “consensus science.” On that view, science reflects broad agreement but does not claim a corner on truth.

Michael Crichton (1942‒2008), a medical doctor and author of science fiction classics like Jurassic Park, Westworld, and The Andromeda Strain — and the creator of the TV series ER — shared this view. In a Caltech lecture, the master storyteller gives consensus science a gut punch. He said,

Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had.

Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period. 

Michael Crichton, “Aliens Cause Global Warming”  Caltech Michelin Lecture, January 17, 2003

Unfortunately, as John West, author of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity (Discovery Institute Press 2025), has pointed out, the US government tends to almost exclusively fund consensus science. One outcome may be that members of the Church of Scientism take no prisoners in defending their turf and this practice. Anything contrary to their view is dubbed polarization and misinformation.  From that comes a conceited sense of superiority as evidenced by Anthony Fauci’s claim that “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science.” A more accurate quote would be “Attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on consensus science.”

Crichton’s cutting critique of consensus science is supported by history. 

What we can learn from history

Below is a list of discredited scientific theories dating from the 20^th century. Each was once widely accepted as established science at some point during that period. And some who bucked the scientific consensus have made world-changing discoveries.

Ulcers: For a long time, the medical consensus was that peptic ulcers were caused by stress and lifestyle factors. Two Australian researchers, however, came to believe ulcers were caused by bacteria. Barry J. Marshall and Robin Warren’s claim was so far outside of consensus that no scientist believed them. Great discoveries come from Johns Hopkins, Harvard and MD Anderson. Not from Perth, Australia.

To prove the theory, Marshall underwent a gastric biopsy to demonstrate that he had no ulcer. Then he infected himself with bacteria and formed an ulcer. When he cured himself with antibiotics and bismuth salt regimens, the theory was proved. Marshall’s dedication to disproving the consensus was, as they say, beyond the call. Marshall and Warren were awarded a Nobel Prize for ignoring consensus science and thinking and acting creatively outside the box instead.

Famine: In 1970 Professor Peter Gunter defended an alarming claim with an appeal to consensus:

Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable…. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions…. By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

The consensus was wrong. There have certainly been famines since Gunter’s prophecy. But they sporadically occur locally due to droughts, war and politics. Gunter’s gloomy prophecy about global famine was wrong and he will be primary remembered in history for the wrongness of his consensus-based claim.

Relativity: Or take the consensus science rebel Albert Einstein (1879–1955)  who — at the tender age of twenty-six — challenged consensus in his development of relativity theory. For one thing, the speed of light was widely viewed to be relative to the speed of the observer with respect to the light source. Inspired by the Michelson‒Morley experiment, Einstein abandoned this consensus. He theorized that the speed of light was a constant, independent of the relative speeds of the light source and the observer.

Further, it was known that sound waves need air or some other medium to propagate. Scientists during the time of Einstein believed that electromagnetic waves like light need some similar medium in outer space. Thus they assumed that something called aether was the propagation medium. Einstein correctly hypothesized that there was no such medium as aether. From his breaking out of the box of consensus, the theory of relativity was born.

Image Credit: Jiva Core - Adobe Stock

Quantum mechanics: Einstein, in turn, did not believe in quantum mechanics. In response to his quote (paraphrased) “God does not play dice with the universe!” quantum mechanics pioneer Niels Bohr (1885–1962)  purportedly responded “Einstein. Quit telling God what to do!” 

Here were Einstein’s thoughts. Consider rolling two dice. The outcome can be predicted using precise physical mechanics, accounting for the throw’s dynamics, air resistance, and the dice’s interactions with the table surface. But treating the dice throw outcome as probabilistic is a simpler more tractable model.  This is the jist of what Einstein believed about quantum mechanics. The randomness in quantum mechanics was a probabilistic model describing underlying non-probabilistic laws.

As demonstrated by Bell’s inequality, Einstein was wrong. Quantum mechanics does not follow the principle of “local causality.”

God apparently does play dice with the universe.

Many other centuries-old science beliefs have been discredited

Below is a list of discredited scientific beliefs from before the 20th century, beliefs that were once considered consensus science. Today they seem silly, prompting reflection on whether any of today’s consensus science beliefs will seem equally foolish in a century.

●    Bleeding: The belief that bloodletting gets out the bad blood and lets you heal more quickly. (This is how Geoge Washington died.)

●   Spontaneous generation: The belief that living organisms (e.g., maggots, microbes) arose spontaneously from non-living matter, like rotting food.

●   Phlogiston theory: The belief that combustion and rusting were attributed to the release of a substance called “phlogiston” from materials.

●   Miasma theory of disease: The belief that diseases like cholera and the plague were spread through “miasmas” (bad air) from decaying matter or foul environments.

●   Caloric theory of heat: Heat was once thought to be a fluid called “caloric” that flowed from hot to cold objects.

●   Geocentrism: The belief the earth is the center of the universe.

●   Static Universe:   The belief the universe was eternal and static, neither expanding nor contracting.

These flawed theories have been abandoned in large because of the courage and insight of those willing to buck consensus.

Learning from history

Smart people learn from history. If history has shown numerous cases where consensus science was wrong, should we not be somewhat skeptical of today’s consensus science?  While we know more now, greater humility and less arrogance are still essential. We don’t have all the answers and no one has a corner on truth.

Current worship of absolute “settled science” ropes off sections in the arena of ideas. No one knows the answer to many of the currently argued topics in science. But we do know that by limiting debate and censoring minority scientific viewpoints, “settled science” keeps spinning wheels, stuck in the mud on the open road to scientific progress.