User:Abd/Cascades
Cascade is a phenomenon where majority opinion may be formed through sequential dependent evaluation, rather than simultaneous (or otherwise independent) evaluation, such that later evaluations are not independent reviews of evidence and argument. The particular interest here is cascades which have produced an apparent scientific consensus, while bypassing the ordinary means for scientific consensus formation, such as controlled experiment to test hypotheses.
I will examine two modern cascades, but other cascades, established or proposed, may be added here and studied, in my user space or that of others. Older cascades, where a true settled consensus emerged later, could be very useful to examine, but I'm familiar with two modern ones.
Both of these examples are still highly controversial, but the controversy is greater among non-experts than among experts in the respective fields. In both cases, the situation in scientific journals has flipped, with a previously rejected view now dominating, or at least being treated as "not impossible," but ignorance of this (or rationalization about it) continues.
The two I know about are Cold fusion, and the hypothesis that dietary fat is a major cause of heart disease, and that encouraging low-fat diets would improve public health.
I got the term "cascade" from Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus by John Tierney, a 2007 Review of a book by Gary Taubes, an established science journalist.
Taubes, in the early 1990s, wrote a book, Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion, (1993), in which he participated in the Cold fusion cascade. The book is excellent as a source for opinions of the time, but it was written before evidence was confirmed demonstrating that the discovered reaction was not artifact, but was, instead, very likely, deuterium fusion through a still-unknown mechanism. Taubes, eager to tell a compelling story about what had elsewhere been called "the scientific fiasco of the century," while it was still timely, apparently seized upon evidence for incompetence and confirmation bias, and that led him, even, to claim fraud, which was never confirmed. However, the impressions remained. That's part of how cascades work.
In his recent work, Taubes first covered the issue of dietary salt, and that led him to study dietary fat. He found the same cascades at work, in those two fields, where politics overwhelmed normal scientific caution.
Case studies
Participation is invited. Users may make good faith changes to the topic pages, subject to my review (as this is in my user space), and may suggest changes or discuss issues on attached Talk pages. My personal goal is full consensus, or at least some high level of consensus, before these pages would be considered for move to mainspace (if deemed appropriate by the LW community).
These topics have been subject to massive controversy on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia pages are not necessarily reliable, but some information can be found through Wikipedia articles. These links may be moved to the subpages as they are created. To start:
It may be of interest that common wiki decision-making process (such as used on Wikipedia) is highly vulnerable to cascades, making decisions, in some cases, impervious to evidence. In theory, the closer of a decision may disregard the voting, and decide based on evidence and strength of argument, but, in fact, closes are often made with a statement that "consensus is," where the closer does not review the evidence at all.