Yet more on Dissent

[sawyl]

Via Pharyngula, another critique of Fuller's Dissent Over Descent, this time from AC Grayling. Here he is examining Fuller's rejection of the idea of scientific consensus:

[I]f scientists disagree about something, if there is no consensus among them, perhaps you can slip an alternative — a god or two? a bit of putative intelligent design? — into the gap. But Fuller really is in a muddle here. He says there is no scientific consensus (in general? or only on a case-by-case basis in regard to some cutting-edge, currently researched problem?) but nevertheless that there is a "scientific orthodoxy" which, if you do not sign up to it, excludes you from access to its structures — presumably, to jobs and funding in science. Well: scientists tend to be clever people so I suppose they are capable of managing to have an orthodoxy without a consensus, though to me that sounds like a contradiction. But let's accept it momentarily. Is the universal agreement among scientists about the periodic table, the predictive power of quantum theory, the methods of testing efficacy of pharmaceutical compounds, and so on for a million such things, a mark of "orthodoxy" but not a fundamental "consensus" about basics, methods and the like? Or might it just be the case that the foundations of science are very secure, universally accepted, and the basis on which open questions, research and debate proceed, and in the light of which they make sense? No doubt ID types like to characterise the existence of as yet unsolved problems and the way research opens new questions for examination as "evidence" that science is in some sort of disarray and in need of appeal to deities to sort it out (scientists debate, they research, they sometimes disagree — so there must be a god!). But here is where Fuller is again in danger of going down his own plughole. If science is impugnable in the way that Fuller alleges, then his describing "ID science" as proper science — without consensus! with a constraining orthodoxy! — is likewise impugnable.

But Grayling seems to me to be too optimistic in his final conclusion that Fuller's book will drive the final nail into the coffin of ID. Rather, I think experience has shown that you don't need to say anything meaningful when you're preaching to the choir, you simply have to pause in the right place and they'll roar back their amen. Thus, I suspect, that in certain quarters, Fuller's book will be hailed as a great insight...