The Perils of Consensus: Why Real Science Keeps Challenging Itself

Science is celebrated as the pursuit of truth. Yet history reminds us that when ideas become consensus, inquiry can falter. Real science doesn’t rest on consensus. It questions, challenges, and tests. Consensus, if unexamined, can become a cage.

We are often told to trust what “experts” agree upon. But consensus is not truth. It is merely the current alignment of opinion. And when that alignment goes unchallenged, the results can be dangerous.

Bloodletting: Centuries of Harm

For nearly two thousand years, bloodletting dominated medicine. Based on the humoral theory, doctors believed illness stemmed from imbalances of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.

Patients suffering from fever, infections, or even minor ailments were routinely subjected to phlebotomy. Often, the practice weakened them, worsened outcomes, and sometimes directly caused death. Yet the consensus endured.

Why? Because it was socially reinforced, institutionally entrenched, and conceptually comfortable. Questioning it was rare. Dissent was discouraged. Patients suffered not because the practitioners were evil, but because consensus misled even skilled hands.

Trepanation: Holes in the Head

Trepanation, the drilling or scraping of holes in the skull, persisted for centuries as a cure for headaches, seizures, and even supposed evil spirits.

Some patients survived. Some may have experienced coincidental relief. But many endured infections, brain injuries, or death. The consensus that this was a legitimate treatment enabled repeated harm.

The lesson: when causation is misunderstood, consensus can sanction invasive, dangerous interventions. Belief in the “correct” explanation can override caution and observation.

Lobotomy: The Modern Catastrophe

Fast forward to the twentieth century. Lobotomy was once hailed as a revolutionary treatment for psychiatric illness.

Thousands of patients underwent the procedure. Many suffered permanent cognitive impairment, personality changes, or vegetative states. The procedure was widely taught, practiced, and endorsed. Consensus among psychiatrists, coupled with institutional approval, allowed this practice to flourish.

It took years, and widespread suffering, before the medical community recognized its dangers. Consensus delayed critical scrutiny. Patients were harmed because experts agreed.

Doctors Smoking Cigarettes

Even the medical establishment has promoted practices now recognized as harmful. In the mid-twentieth century, doctors appeared in cigarette advertisements. Leading physicians assured the public that smoking was safe, even beneficial.

Emerging evidence linking smoking to cancer and lung disease was dismissed or downplayed. Consensus, shaped by social and economic forces, blinded both experts and the public. Millions adopted a dangerous habit based on authoritative agreement.

When Money Shapes Consensus

One of the most underappreciated drivers of consensus science today is funding. Research is rarely independent; it is often sponsored by institutions, corporations, or pharmaceutical companies that stand to profit from certain outcomes.

This creates subtle and not-so-subtle pressures:

• Study design bias: Research can be structured in ways that favor the sponsor’s product or reinforce existing paradigms. The questions asked, the populations studied, and the methods used can all be shaped to maximize favorable outcomes.

• Publication bias: Studies that contradict industry interests are less likely to be published. Journals may prioritize positive results, leaving negative or contradictory findings hidden.

• Financial incentives for experts: Many researchers, key opinion leaders, and consultants receive funding, honoraria, or stock options from industry. This can consciously or unconsciously influence interpretation of data.

• Regulatory capture: Agencies that oversee safety, approval, and guidelines often have personnel who move between industry and government. This “revolving door” can reinforce existing paradigms rather than challenging them.

• Marketing masquerading as research: Sponsored studies can be used to validate products, reinforce public messaging, or discredit alternative approaches. What appears as independent science may actually be a tool to maintain the status quo and protect profit margins.

The result is a self-reinforcing system: consensus grows not necessarily because it is correct, but because it is profitable. Questions that threaten the status quo are marginalized. Alternative frameworks – such as terrain theory, holistic approaches, or novel experimental ideas – struggle to gain recognition, funding, or publication.

The Fragility of Consensus

Consensus can feel reassuring. It gives the impression of certainty. But it is fragile.

It can silence dissent. It can shape funding and publication priorities. It can encourage adherence to ideas long after evidence suggests they are flawed. Consensus often lags behind discovery.

Real science is different. It embraces challenge. It welcomes dissenting hypotheses. It scrutinizes evidence, revises models, and changes when the data demand it. Consensus is provisional. Inquiry is ongoing.

A Call to Question

If you engage with science, whether as a practitioner, researcher, policymaker, or citizen, ask:

• Are dissenting voices being heard?

• How strong and reproducible is the evidence?

• Are economic, institutional, or social forces shaping the dominant view?

• Do we treat consensus as fact, or as the best current model pending better data?

Blind adherence to consensus can cause harm. Skeptical, curious, and ongoing inquiry is what drives discovery. Science advances not through unanimity, but through challenge.

And so we come to the matter at hand: Germ theory – the reigning medical/health "paradigm" of our times – is accepted as consensus science. And this despite the many challenges levied against it, the numerous holes poked in its body of "evidence", and the countless ways the medical industries profit from its existence and our collective adherence to it.

We are told germs cause disease. That viruses exist, and have been proven to exist using the scientific method. That contagion is real.

We endeavor to challenge those assertions, to challenge the science behind the assertions, and to invite you to join us with an open mind as we do so.