It's not like they got together and had a formal vote on it. For these experiments, biologists agreed to a different standard of evidence. Suddenly, spurious results were cropping up at a staggering pace. Biologists haven't had such problems, but other problems have popped up as new technology enabled them to do tests that covered tens of thousands of genes instead of only a handful. Physicists found that signals that were three standard deviations from the expected value came and went all the time, which is why they increased their standard.

While that makes the standards of evidence sound completely rational, they're also deeply empirical. What is relevant is reproducible results. 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.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Still, it's worth looking at what he said, if only because it's so painfully misguided: Crichton was rather notable for doubting the conclusions of climate scientists-he wrote an entire book in which they were the villains-so it's fair to say he wasn't thrilled when the field reached a consensus. Standards of evidenceįiction author Michael Crichton probably started the backlash against the idea of consensus in science. And only after that is it possible to take a look at consensus and climate change. In light of all the consensus choruses, it's probably time to step back and examine its importance and why it's a central part of the scientific process. Lost in the shouting is the fact that consensus plays several key roles in the process of science. One of the many unfortunate aspects of arguments over climate change is that it's where many people come across the idea of a scientific consensus. Just as unfortunately, their first exposure tends to be in the form of shouted sound bites: 'But there's a consensus!' 'Consensus has no place in science!' Digital Internet (via Flickr) reader comments 600 with

Michael crichton climate change book