Explicating ways of consensus-making in science and society: distinguishing the academic, the interface and the meta-consensus

Abstract

In this chapter, we shed new light on the epistemic struggle between establishing consensus and acknowledging plurality, by explicating different ways of consensus-making in science and society and examining the impact hereof on their field of intersection, i.e. consensus conferences (in particular those organized by the National Institute of Health). We draw a distinction between, what we call, academic and interface consensus, to capture the wide appeal to consensus in existing literature. We investigate such accounts – i.e. from Miriam Solomon, John Beatty and Alfred Moore, and Boaz Miller – as to put forth a new understanding of consensus-making, focusing on the meta-consensus. We further defend how (NIH) consensus conferences enable epistemic work, through demands of epistemic adequacy and contestability, contrary to the claim that consensus conferences miss a window for epistemic opportunity (Solomon M, The social epistemology of NIH consensus conferences. In: Kincaid H, McKitrick J (ed) Establishing medical reality: methodological and metaphysical issues in philosophy of medicine. Springer, Dordrecht, 2007). Paying attention to the dynamics surrounding consensus, moreover, allows us to illustrate how the public understanding of science and the public use of the ideal of consensus could be well modified.