[speedgeek]

There is a prize winning physicist in my area who was arrested for starting a major brush fire. He plugged multiple extension cords together to power an electric fence and the overheating of the cords started the fire. Intelligence does not apply to every possible topic. Trusting the consensus of people trained in an area is always better than discounting that consensus because someone with little to no expertise on the subject challenges their ideas.

[m0zg]

> Trusting the consensus of people trained in an area is always better

That's what they said when Galileo Galilei was on trial for not trusting the "consensus" about geocentric view of the world.

To use a more recent example, that's what they said of Dr. Barry Marshall who discovered that it was Heliobacter Pylori, and not "stress" that's causing ulcers in the stomach. Dude was very nearly laughed out of his field, to the point where he had to take the unconventional step of infecting himself with h. pylori to prove the point, and then curing himself of it with antibiotics.

In a politicized field especially, it can very easily cost one their scientific career if they "disagree with consensus" if one is less prominent than Dyson, whereas "agreeing with consensus" is strongly beneficial.

[InitialLastName]

Galileo didn't get into trouble because of a general consensus, he got into trouble because he made fun of the Pope. It was straight up authoritarianism that put him on trial, not his scientific position.

[AQuantized]

I think you'll find those people were actually trained in their respective fields and not fielding essentially uneducated opinions, however.