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That's OK. I didn't say you should ignore a consensus in your field, if you apply rigorous standards to it.
But in my field, for example, the consensus used to be that bacteria were not only unimportant, but at one time the consensus was that they didn't exist!
Not that many years ago, we used to think that stress was the major factor in duodenal ulcers and that rest in the hospital and drinking milk and cream were proper treatments for such.
It is, almost daily, that I find something entirely AGAINST CURRENT CONSENSUS in the medical newspapers, journals, or at conferences that turns out, after a little more investigation, to be true.
Consensus is NOT a reliable guide to determining scientific truth. It is one reason I am not in favor of cookbook medicine based on consensus guidelines for making medical decisions.
Speaking with Dr. Normal Kaplan, one of the more distinguished members of the JNCC, regarding treatment for high blood pressure, he told me that he didn't treat patients according to the guidelines (I think Number 6 had just been released) because they were ALREADY OBSOLETE.
I would think that, rather than count noses and voting with the majority, you would prefer to look for truth. But that's just me. I'd like to think that, were I a physician in the time of Semmelweiss or Lister, I would have had the courage to note the consensus and ignore it in favor of actual new data.
