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Riffing off his 2009 book Darwin Then and Now, Richard William Nelson notes,
Public schools are required to teach evolution as a valid scientific theory. Interestingly enough, not a single science organization in the twenty-first-century has successfully developed a scientific consensus on evolution. Consensus development is a privileged responsibility of science organizations. A scientific consensus, while not synonymous with absolute truth, gives non-scientists guidance to gain scientific understandings.
Eighteen science organizations currently have a consensus statement on climate change, spanning from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to the American Medical Association (AMA). A scientific consensus on climate change, from leading science organizations, while silent on a scientific consensus on evolution, is rather telling.
Since the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin in 1859, scientific discoveries have challenged Darwin’s theory. Therefore, if evolution is taught as a scientifically valid theory, a modern scientific consensus on evolution is essential.
The lack of a modern consensus, however, is not due to negligence. In this article, we will journey through the critical changes in Darwin’s theory, along with the efforts of evolution scientists to develop a modernized consensus.
Richard William Nelson, “Consensus on Evolution” at Darwin Then and Now (September 17, 2020)
The main reason there isn’t a consensus is surely that anything like a consensus would create the risk of falsification. The vaguer a theory is, the less falsifiable it is.A theory like Darwinism is grand and leads to all kinds of dramatic arts and culture stuff but remains too vague to be proven wrong or proven much of anything.