Comment Re:The simple fact that we can't talk about this.. (Score 1) 207
Clearly you don't know how the Argument from Authority works, if you assume it is automatically a fallacy.
Nobody is claiming that the consensus view is 100% unassailably correct, just because it's a consensus. Like Occam's Razor, it's merely an aid to choosing between uncertain alternatives. Any rock-solid evidence could challenge the consensus view successfully - if you could be certain it was rock-solid.
And therein lies the rub. Science is uncertain. 100% certainty does not exist, outside pure math. We will never see a study that is self-evidently absolute truth to any person who views it, because a study can only roughly approximate reality, and our ability to judge these approximations varies according to our expertise with that aspect of reality and the techniques used to approximate it. Failing to realise this is the hallmark of Dunning-Kruger.
In the absence of certainty, the consensus view is more probably correct, and is therefore the best view to take, at least until better evidence comes along. And if you believe there is already better evidence, then why has it not changed the consensus view? I've yet to hear an answer for this that doesn't involve mass incompetence or mass conspiracy, either of which are far less probable than the remaining option of the "better" evidence not actually being better.
Also, you dodged the question: How do you (personally) know one specific scientist is right, and the others are wrong?