Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I was reading the article Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus the other day in the New York Times, and parts of it sounded quite familiar. The article uses the mistaken belief that high-fat diets cause heart disease to explain an "informational cascade", where groups are prone to reaching mistaken conclusions, or consensus.

Does this sound familiar?

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the food industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the fat-is-bad school. Later the National Institutes of Health would hold a “consensus conference” that concluded there was “no doubt” that low-fat diets “will afford significant protection against coronary heart disease” for every American over the age of 2. The American Cancer Society and the surgeon general recommended a low-fat diet to prevent cancer.

But when the theories were tested in clinical trials, the evidence kept turning up negative.

What if we substitute global warming for high fat diets? Might it look something like this?

The scientists, despite their impressive credentials, were accused of bias because some of them had done research financed by the energy industry. And so the informational cascade morphed into what the economist Timur Kuran calls a reputational cascade, in which it becomes a career risk for dissidents to question the popular wisdom.

With skeptical scientists ostracized, the public debate and research agenda became dominated by the man-made global warming school. Later the IPCC would hold a “consensus conference” that concluded there was “no doubt” that humans were causing global warming. The IPCC recommended reductions in carbin emissions.

But when the theories were tested in trials, the evidence kept turning up negative.

Yes, that's where I've heard it before. And that turned out to be a false consensus, even though it was perpetuated by numerous experts:

Mr. Taubes told me he especially admired the iconoclasm of Dr. Edward H. Ahrens Jr., a lipids researcher who spoke out against the McGovern committee’s report. Mr. McGovern subsequently asked him at a hearing to reconcile his skepticism with a survey showing that the low-fat recommendations were endorsed by 92 percent of “the world’s leading doctors.” [emphasis mine]

Yet that 92 percent of the worlds leading doctors turned out to be wrong.

My favorite part of the article is the final two paragraphs:

“Senator McGovern, I recognize the disadvantage of being in the minority,” Dr. Ahrens replied. Then he pointed out that most of the doctors in the survey were relying on secondhand knowledge because they didn’t work in this field themselves.

“This is a matter,” he continued, “of such enormous social, economic and medical importance that it must be evaluated with our eyes completely open. Thus I would hate to see this issue settled by anything that smacks of a Gallup poll.” Or a cascade.

Werecognize that we have mistakenly achieved false consensus in the past, and we understand the reason we made that mistake. Yet we can't possibly admit that this might be happening again. Instead we seem to think that it is ok to accept the consensus. And to punish those that wish to think for themselves.