Is it the twisted fact that science is not "consensus"?
"Aliens Cause Global Warming" by Michael Crichton
Lets be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.
In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If its consensus, it isnt science. If its science, it isnt consensus. Period.
Michael Crichton, Caltech Michelin Lecture January 17, 2003