ChatGPT said:
Yes, it is often reasonable to follow an overwhelming majority of experts—but with some important caveats.
Why it is reasonable:
- Division of cognitive labor: In complex fields (like medicine, climate science, or economics), laypeople rely on experts because the depth of knowledge and methodological training required to evaluate claims independently is substantial.
- Track record: Overwhelming expert consensus (e.g., about smoking causing cancer or the role of vaccines) has a strong historical record of being reliable.
- Peer accountability: A large majority in a professional community usually reflects a process of critical scrutiny, replication, and refinement.
Caveats:
- Check the quality of consensus:
- Is it based on open debate, evidence, and peer review?
- Or is it shaped by political, institutional, or financial pressures?
- Consider the field’s maturity: In newer or more speculative domains (e.g. early AI safety), consensus may be premature or fragile.
- Beware of appeal to authority fallacy: You should not believe something only because many experts do—it’s better to understand the reasons behind the consensus, if possible.
- Keep room for legitimate minority views: Especially in science, today’s outlier may be tomorrow’s paradigm shift (e.g., continental drift theory).
Summary:
Yes, deferring to an overwhelming majority of experts is a reasonable default, especially in high-stakes or technical domains. But it should be combined with critical thinking, awareness of the context, and openness to future evidence.
Would you like an example of a case where expert consensus was wrong—or one where it was especially trustworthy?
4o
You said:
both
ChatGPT said:
Here are examples of both a trustworthy expert consensus and a case where the consensus was later overturned:
✅ Trustworthy Expert Consensus: Smoking causes lung cancer
- Context: In the mid-20th century, a growing number of epidemiological studies showed a strong correlation between smoking and lung cancer. By the 1960s, the majority of public health experts and medical researchers agreed that smoking was a major health risk.
- Result: This consensus led to public health campaigns, regulations, and a massive reduction in smoking rates in many countries.
- Why it was reliable:
- Based on rigorous, reproducible studies.
- Supported across disciplines (epidemiology, pathology, biochemistry).
- Predictive and explanatory power: cessation reduced cancer rates.
❌ Faulty Expert Consensus: Geocentrism (Earth at the center of the universe)
- Context: For centuries, the consensus in both scientific and religious institutions was that the Earth was the center of the universe. This was supported by Aristotle, Ptolemy, and later institutionalized by the Church.
- Overturned by: Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler through improved observations and a better explanatory model (heliocentrism).
- Why the consensus failed:
- Based on limited data and observational errors.
- Reinforced by dogma and authority, not open scientific critique.
- Alternative hypotheses were suppressed or dismissed without due consideration.
These cases show that consensus is a strong clue but not infallible. The key difference is whether the consensus is:
- Evidence-driven and open to revision (good),
- or authority-driven and closed to criticism (bad).
Would you like a historical case from philosophy or ethics instead of science?
4o
You said:
is there a case in the 20th century where a majority of experts were wrong
ChatGPT said:
Yes, there are several cases from the 20th century where a majority—or at least a dominant mainstream—of experts were wrong. Here are two prominent examples:
❌ Nutrition Science: Dietary Fat and Heart Disease (mid-20th century onward)
- Claim: Saturated fat causes heart disease, so low-fat diets are healthiest.
- Consensus: For decades, from the 1960s onward, public health guidelines (especially in the U.S.) emphasized low-fat diets. Experts and government agencies widely accepted the lipid hypothesis.
- Why it was wrong or incomplete:
- Later evidence showed that refined carbohydrates and sugars (often used in low-fat foods) were a greater contributor to metabolic issues and heart disease.
- Some early studies were methodologically weak or selectively interpreted.
- Industry influence (e.g., sugar industry funding anti-fat research) distorted the narrative.
- Result: Decades of misleading public health advice, contributing to rising obesity and diabetes rates.
❌ Psychiatry and Homosexuality as a Mental Disorder
- Claim: Homosexuality is a psychological pathology.
- Consensus: For much of the 20th century, mainstream psychiatry—reflected in the DSM-I and DSM-II—classified homosexuality as a mental illness.
- Overturned: In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declassified it after sustained pressure, new research, and shifts in social understanding.
- Why it was wrong:
- Based on cultural bias, not empirical evidence.
- Reinforced by a closed disciplinary culture and moral assumptions.
- Dissenters were marginalized or silenced.
Both examples show how expert consensus can go wrong due to:
- Weak or biased evidence bases,
- Institutional inertia,
- Cultural or political pressures,
- Lack of critical openness.
Would you like an example where the minority view turned out to be right in philosophy or the social sciences?
4o
You said:
yes in the 20th century
ChatGPT said:
A powerful 20th-century example in philosophy and the social sciences where a minority view turned out to be right is:
❌ The Behaviorist Consensus vs. Noam Chomsky’s Challenge to B.F. Skinner
- Dominant View: In the mid-20th century, behaviorism—especially in the U.S.—was the dominant paradigm in psychology and parts of linguistics. Leading figures like B.F. Skinner claimed that all human behavior, including language, could be explained by stimulus-response conditioning and reinforcement.
- Minority View: Noam Chomsky argued in the 1950s and 1960s that language acquisition couldn’t be explained solely through behaviorist mechanisms. His famous 1959 review of Skinner’s Verbal Behavior was a turning point.
- Chomsky’s Argument:
- Children acquire complex grammar rapidly and with limited input.
- They produce novel sentences they’ve never heard before.
- Therefore, some internal structure (what became known as universal grammar) must guide language learning.
- Outcome:
- The “cognitive revolution” in psychology began, with the rise of cognitive science and computational models of the mind.
- Behaviorism lost its dominance in explaining higher-order human cognition.
- Chomsky’s ideas reshaped linguistics and influenced philosophy of mind, AI, and cognitive psychology.
Why this matters:
- At the time, behaviorism was supported by leading institutions and journals, and dissenting views were marginalized.
- Chomsky’s arguments were conceptual, not experimental—but they exposed deep explanatory gaps in the prevailing theory.
- This shows how conceptual clarity and internal critique can overturn dominant paradigms, even without large empirical backing at first.
Would you like another example, perhaps from economics, anthropology, or political theory?
4o
You said:
is there an example of a majority of experts in the 20th century wrong about evolution
ChatGPT said:
Yes, there are a few notable cases in the 20th century where the majority view among experts about evolution turned out to be partially or significantly wrong, or at least incomplete. Here’s a key example:
❌ The “Modern Synthesis” and the Rejection of Developmental Biology (Mid-20th Century)
- Dominant View: From the 1940s to roughly the 1980s, evolutionary biology was dominated by the Modern Synthesis, which integrated Darwinian natural selection with Mendelian genetics. This view emphasized population genetics, gene frequencies, and gradual changes.
- What was excluded:
- Embryology and developmental biology were mostly ignored.
- The belief was that genes alone were sufficient to explain how evolutionary change occurs—developmental processes were seen as “black boxes” or irrelevant to evolutionary theory.
- Why this was wrong/incomplete:
- Developmental biology profoundly influences what kinds of variation are possible and how traits evolve.
- The rise of evo-devo (evolutionary developmental biology) in the 1990s–2000s showed that genes don’t act in isolation; they function within complex regulatory networks that shape morphology and constrain possible evolutionary paths.
- For example, changes in gene regulation (not just gene sequence) can produce significant evolutionary changes.
- Impact:
- The Modern Synthesis is now considered outdated or incomplete by many evolutionary biologists.
- Calls for an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis now incorporate evo-devo, epigenetics, niche construction, and other mechanisms ignored in mid-century thinking.
Summary:
For decades, the majority of evolutionary biologists downplayed or ignored the importance of development in evolution. It took a minority view—championed by figures like Stephen Jay Gould and later evo-devo researchers—to begin to correct that.
Would you be interested in how this debate connects to philosophical questions about form, emergence, or teleology in evolution?
4o
You said:
are there experts in evolution theory who deny evolution on the basis of science
ChatGPT said:
There are very few experts in evolutionary biology who deny evolution on scientific grounds, and none who are respected within the mainstream scientific community for doing so.
However, to answer precisely:
✅ Consensus View:
- Evolution by natural selection is overwhelmingly supported by empirical evidence from genetics, paleontology, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, and ecology.
- It is considered one of the most robust theories in all of science.
- Nearly all professional biologists accept it as the best explanation for the diversity of life.
❌ Dissenting Voices:
There are a tiny number of scientists—often from fields adjacent to but not within evolutionary biology—who claim to reject evolution for what they describe as scientific reasons. Common characteristics of these figures:
- They do not publish in peer-reviewed evolutionary journals with arguments against evolution.
- Their objections often misunderstand or misrepresent evolutionary theory, focusing on improbability arguments, gaps in the fossil record, or complexity claims.
- Their views are often associated with or funded by religiously motivated organizations, such as the Discovery Institute (which promotes Intelligent Design).
Examples sometimes cited:
- Michael Behe (biochemist): Promotes irreducible complexity, arguing certain biological structures (like the bacterial flagellum) could not have evolved gradually. This claim has been thoroughly refuted within the scientific community.
- Jonathan Wells (biologist, Discovery Institute): Criticizes textbooks and evolutionary education, but his scientific credibility is widely disputed.
Key Point:
- These figures are not denying evolution based on new data or better explanatory models—they reject evolution despite the evidence, often using arguments that have been rebutted for decades.
- No reputable evolutionary biologist denies evolution on scientific grounds.
Conclusion:
No, there are no recognized experts in evolutionary theory who deny evolution purely on the basis of science, without invoking ideological, philosophical, or religious assumptions.
Would you like a list of major lines of scientific evidence for evolution, or how scientists handle unresolved questions within the theory?
4o