I had to actually e-mail the guy on this one: Michael Crichton, as quoted in
GeoPolitical Review
I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. 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. 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....
Mr. Crichton,
Perhaps you were misquoted or quoted out of context. Do you understand how a consensus in science is reached? I have to guess you do, but the impression a reader might glean from that statement is that not only do you not know, you stated how it was done in the very same piece which seeks to discredit scientific consensus, thus rendering this statement even more confusing.
To wit, "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."
That is a consensus. That is, in thumbnail sketch, how a legitimate consensus is arrived at in the scientific community at large. New ideas are tested, the reasults published, the experiments/observations repeated, those results published, etc, and the whole time the entire caucus of researchers in that field descends and tries to pick the ideas apart. What remains valid is then a consensus until someone comes along and explains it better or falsifies it.
Maybe you meant a percieved and erroneous consensus among the public? For example the percieved consensus that a bumblebee can't fly, or that evolution is only a theory? But here it reads as if you stated that peer review, ie., consensus science, should be stopped and then recommended it be replaced with what appears to be the exact same process.
You're a wonderfully talented and imaginative writer, and you've done a lot to get young people interested in science. As a science writer and former teacher I regularly encounter folks who became paleontologists or biologists because your outstanding fiction.
Statements like this however not an effective way to promulgate science, do not serve science, and are counterproductive to your future, aforementioned, utility, public perception, and inspirational value.
Regards,
DarkSyde