[astro123]

No-one is making an argument by authority. Here is a nice popular article that outlines some of the issues with MOND https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/03/06/only...

I just think that it is very hard to understand the scientific consensus (average view of people who spend a lot of time thinking about this) when all you read are popular science articles that tend to focus on the exciting/new/possibly game changing edges. I'm just here letting people know what the consensus is.

[rpedela]

Most people on HN are aware that the consensus, a form of argument by authority, is dark matter. It is also known that the dark matter consensus has problems despite billions spent on research over decades. When there is an experimental result that contradicts the leading theory, that is interesting and worthy of media attention. If this experimental result was only published in popular media, then I too would likely ignore it. However it was also published in a major journal. Like you said elsewhere, that doesn't mean it is right. But I think it is worthy of attention and discussion and should not be dismissed out of hand because it doesn't agree with consensus.

[dodobirdlord]

The existence of a consensus opinion isn’t an argument from authority. To claim so is an interesting form of the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy ('after this, therefore because of this'). The argument for agreeing with the consensus isn’t the existence of the consensus, but rather the same argument that caused the consensus to exist, the underlying body of research.

Framing it as a result that flies in the face of consensus is fun and exciting, especially since people who are science-literate know that a single compelling result can overturn a consensus formed by a large body of previous work. But framing it in that sense is unhelpful, since the vast majority of publications that “fly in the face of consensus” do not. It’s a lot less exciting to view this as one more paper on a large pile supporting MOND, that is still small in comparison to the pile that support dark matter. The paper is obviously worthy of attention and isn’t being dismissed out of hand, it is published in The Astrophysical Journal. But would Hacker News be discussing it if not for the contrarianism embodied by the former framing, as opposed to the latter?

[Chris2048]

> consensus, a form of argument by authority

It's not, because is specifically argument based on authority. Consensus could have authority in democratic context, but that isn't the meaning of "argument by <X>" which is the distilled context of some basis of proof. You could just as easily link consensus to "Argumentum ad populum".

In fact, this is spelled out on wikipedia: The two are similar, but not the same - both are "Fallacies of relevance": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

This doesn't really apply either though, because we are talking consensus among a specialized group of experts/peers, which seems to me a lot more relevant that general consensus. Appeal to authority isn't always fallicious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority