With a cacophony of scientific voices on social media – some well informed, others crackpot – establishing scientific consensus on key issues is proving more difficult than ever. But a project led by Durham University academics may soon have the answer to that thorny question of what can be confidently called a “scientific fact”.
Under a scheme headed by Peter Vickers, co-director of Durham’s Centre for Humanities Engaging Science and Society, scientists from across the world will be emailed to give their view on issues on which opinion appears to be split. Results from the polls, which seek to reach as many as 100,000 scientists at a time, will be shared to help the public gauge the true level of consensus on contested topics.
“Humanity has never had a way to measure reliably the opinion of the scientific community,” explained Professor Vickers, who claimed efforts to do so have been “small scale” and reliant on fewer than 2,000 responses. “We need a way to access scientific opinion on a large scale and internationally,” he added of the proposed Institute for Ascertaining Scientific Consensus.
