Minority View Quotes

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
― Michael Crichton

“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
― Michael Crichton

“The struggle to find a poetry in which your survival rather than your defeat is celebrated, perhaps to find your own voice to insist upon that, or to at least find a way to survive amidst an ethos that relishes your erasures and failures is work that many and perhaps most young women have to do”
― Rebecca Solnit, Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir

“Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized? Aunty Eva, Anwar's flatmates. Omar would never know unless I wrote to him. Uncle Saleh was across the world. A few years back, getting pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given my father a heart attack, dealt a blow ti my mother's marriage, and mild, modern Omar, instead of beating me, would called me a slut. And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom.”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“I must settle for freedom in this modern time”
― Leila Aboulela, Minaret

“Migocząca Gwiazda opowiadała też, że jej własna babcia była pod Grzbietem Tłustej Trawy, kiedy trwała tam słynna bitwa, którą biali nazywają bitwą pod Little Bighorn. Lakoci, Czejenowie i Arapaho pokonali w niej 7 Regiment Kawalerii pułkownika George'a Custera. – Biali kłamią – opowiadała Migocząca Gwiazda – twierdząc, że Custer zginął w walce. Indianie chcieli go oszczędzic, żeby wrócił do swoich upokorzony. Po bitwie gromady kobiet przepędzały z indiańskiej ziemi niedobitki kawalerzystów. Custer w popłochu uciekał przed kobietami. W końcu zatrzymał się, wyciągnął rewolwer i palnął sobie w łeb. Babcia babci widziała to na własne oczy.”
― Maciej Jarkowiec, Powrócę jako piorun. Krótka historia Dzikiego Zachodu