Let's all sit and argue about nothing.

Philosophers of science argue over the epistemological limits of such a consensus and some, including Thomas Kuhn, have pointed to the existence of scientific revolutionsin the history of science as being an important indication that scientific consensus can, at times, be wrong. Nevertheless, the sheer explanatory power of science in its ability to make accurate and precise predictions and aid in the design and engineering of new technology has ensconced "science" and, by proxy, the opinions of the scientific community as a highly respected form of knowledge both in the academy and in popular culture.

Political controversies

The high regard with which scientific results are held in Western society has caused a number of political controversies over scientific subjects to arise. A persistency of the alleged conflict between religion and science has often been cited as representative of a struggle between tradition and progress or faith and reason. The combative relationship has been cited back to the beginnings of natural science when Galileo was tried before the Inquisition for preaching blasphemy regarding heliocentrism. In more recent times, the creation-evolution controversy has resulted in many religious believers in a supernatural creation to attack the naturalisticexplanation of origins provided by the sciences of evolutionary biology, geology, and astronomy. Although the dichotomy seems to be of a different outlook from a ContinentalEuropean perspective, it does exist. The Vienna Circle, for instance, had a paramount (i.e. symbolic) influence on the semiotic regime represented by the ScientificCommunity in Europe.

In the decades following World War II, many in the scientific community were convinced that nuclear power would solve the pending energy crisis by providing "energy too cheap to meter". This advocacy led to the construction of many nuclear power plants, but was also accompanied by a global political movement opposed to nuclear power due to safety concerns and associations of the technology with nuclear weapons. Mass protests in the United States and Europe during the 1970s and 1980s along with the disasters of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island led to a decline in nuclear power plant construction.

In the last decades or so, both global warming and stem cells have placed the opinions of the scientific community in the forefront of political debate.