Scientific Consensus: It’s Not a Vote, It’s the Evidence!

Scientific consensus is when most scientists agree on something after looking at a lot of evidence and doing many studies.

Think of it like this: if 100 doctors all study the same illness and 97 of them say, “Yep, we’ve tested this, and this is what we’ve found,” then we say there’s a consensus—a strong agreement—on that topic.

But it’s important to know: it’s not a vote. Scientists don’t just raise their hands and pick an answer. Instead, they do experiments, gather data, and check each other’s work. If many scientists get the same results over and over, that’s how a consensus forms.

Photo of a stack of scientific journals. — Image: Stack of scientific journals. Credit: Freepik AI

Examples of Scientific Evidence Include:

Smoking causes cancer

Vaccines help prevent disease

Climate change is real, and a lot of it is caused by things humans do—like burning fuel and cutting down forests

Consensus happens through years of research, careful testing, and updating ideas as new information comes in. It’s how science builds trust in what we know.

The Scientific Consensus Con Game

Even though many peer-reviewed studies show that 97% of publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is caused by humans, there’s still disinformation out there saying otherwise. So who’s spreading these false claims?

For example, Forbes published two articles that go against the scientific consensus. One was written by Alex Epstein, an American author who supports expanding fossil fuel use and disagrees with climate scientists. The other was written by the University of Houston Energy Fellows—a group supported by Chevron, a major fossil fuel company.

In fact, almost all articles that deny climate change are connected to the fossil fuel industry or billionaire industrialists. Hmmm… noticing a pattern?