Peter Whittle writes about 'the wisdom of crowds' in relation to climate change:
Conservativehome has already commented on The Observer's shock at a poll yesterday which showed that most people are sceptical about the real reasons for climate change.
What's heartening about this is the way in which public attitudes and instincts can still withstand the most determined onslaught from the political class and the liberal elites...
I'm concerned that the wisdom of crowds meme, like some crowds, is getting out of control. Obviously, anyone who believes in democracy has to have trust in his or her fellow citizens; but surely, as Conservatives, we should also expect a degree of trust in those who, by virtue of merit, can speak with authority in certain fields of human endeavour.
Such trust has to be earned, of course, and in many areas the intelligentsia has, thanks to its profound lack of wisdom, lost its authority – but not, I would contend, in the sciences. Whether or not climate change is happening and has an anthropogenic cause is a fundamentally scientific issue. How we respond to the phenomenon is a political judgement best left to democratic decision-making processes, but assessing the physical impact of greenhouse gas emissions is a matter of expert, peer reviewed measurement and analysis.
That is not to say that the wisdom of crowds is of no use to science. For instance, medical science has confirmed the efficacy of many folk remedies – and native traditions have helped 'bio-prospectors' to find useful plant-based chemical compounds previously unknown in the West. However, when one compares the medical advances made in the scientific age compared to everything that preceded it, one can only conclude that there is something to be said for elitism.
In some respects, the wisdom of crowds is just plain useless. For instance, the principles of quantum physics are so deeply counter-intuitive that no amount of common sense or guess work would ever have allowed us to get at the astonishing truths uncovered by just a few, rather eccentric boffins. In many other areas the technical knowledge required to gather and interpret the evidence is beyond all but the specialists.
So, to summarise, the wisdom of crowds is not universally applicable: who we trust to respond to a scientific observation is a very different question to who we trust to make it in the first place.
