What is scientific consensus for policy? Heartlands and hinterlands of physics

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Policy-makers should rely on generating decisions in the light of mainstream scientific opinion - what is often called 'the scientific consensus'. This project is aimed at understanding how this consensus is formed. If we want to understand what is going on when policy-makers gauge the extent of consensus and non-consensus in the scientific and technological community, we need to understand these processes. Yet science is often controversial. A healthy science needs disagreement and discussion as much as it needs consensus in order to test conclusions to the maximum. The public and policy-makers often encounter scientific disagreement when faced with crucial decisions. Therefore the nature of agreement and disagreement in science needs to be understood.Science is knowledge based on communal agreement, yet individuals can and do sometimes disagree with the mainstream. Using science's rhetorical power as an element of public discourse, one can create an atmosphere of controversy where there is possibly none (e.g. writing scientific papers that suggest the existence of disagreement where there is none in the scientific mainstream). For example, the tobacco lobby is known for having done this and it could be that the oil industry has helped to create an appearance of disagreement in the matter of the science of climate change.To increase our understanding of these issues we will look at consensus formation in physics. The project will begin by looking at the place where many physicists initially reveal their work to their fellows: the dominant electronic preprint server known as 'arXiv'. Physicists can upload their draft papers to arXiv where they may be read by the wider community. Currently around 6,000 papers a month are uploaded to arXiv. An ordinary member of the public cannot upload a paper to arXiv because it is technically complex, but also because, nowadays, the submission must be sponsored by an existing professional physicist. However it has not always been like this. At one time anyone who understood the technicalities could upload. The new restrictions have been put in place because too many unorthodox submissions were being made. In sociological language, a border has been established which now defines what has potential to contribute to the consensus on a topic and what does not. If we want to understand the nature of scientific consensus, arXiv is a good place to start.Physicists admit they read very few of the papers uploaded to arXiv, concentrating on those that have a direct bearing on their research topics. But arXiv has another way of dealing with papers without simply excluding them: it puts them into a category called 'general physics'. We do not know how physicists choose what is interesting and what is not, what they know about the meaning of the general physics category and, therefore, how the notions of 'good' and 'bad' science are created in physicists' minds. We also do not know what the excluded physicists, or redirected physicists, make of what happens to them, something else we will examine. We will look further into the territory of qualified scientists who publish in so called 'fringe journals' and further out still into the world of what are sometimes called 'cranks'. All this fits into and understanding of the creation of consensus and those outside it.The results of looking at all these boundaries will then be re-conceptualised to understand what this means for the formation of consensus in science that has policy implications. The ultimate aim is to illuminate policy-related discussions of how to identify the boundaries of legitimate science and the consensus that exists within them. The research should then help policymakers and publics interested in scientific affairs to distinguish when a science is or is not controversial. Our deep, careful study of the way these things unfold in arXiv will give us a sound scientific understanding that can be applied to other areas.