Consensus and disagreement are equally important to obtaining large amounts of knowledge, but are the two also responsible for hindering someone’s access to correct knowledge? I believe consensus can be described as an agreement among peers and a disagreement would be the inverse, a disagreement among peers. Too often, people that have a limited knowledge on a subject are able to discuss it, and without proper research, or even a well-structured peer review, the conclusions that can be made about a subject are skewed and incorrect- leading to a gain of incorrect knowledge. This is seen very often throughout history in dictatorships and in the natural sciences where peer reviews take place.
In the natural sciences, consensus and disagreement are key to creating and obtaining robust knowledge, and this is one of the only fields where consensus and
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When completing an experiment and publishing it, if an idea or theory is expressed that will challenge the already accepted beliefs in the community, peer reviews and others recreating the experiment follow immediately to test how true the statement is. If there is disagreement over the findings of an experiment, the use of disagreement can lead to consensus. The skepticism that typically follows new information leads to the experiment being redone and retested, thus, a consensus is met once the information presented is proven to be true by others. The use of consensus and disagreement is also very important to the formation of new theories. Without the continual agreements and disagreements among people, or the lack of, the development of new ways of thinking simply wouldn’t exist. The prolonged time before a new theory is widely accepted that can cause controversy among scientific communities is witnessed through any ground breaking and thought inspiring idea. The