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"Putting it another way, the 'scientists were wrong' argument relies on the premise that older scientific theories were wrong, but the only reason we know they were wrong was via reiterative applications of the scientific process. To claim to know that those older theories were wrong is to implicitly admit that the process by which they were determined to be wrong is generating knowledge of superior reliability to that which preceded it. If it didn’t, then the contrarian would be in no position to claim that any those old theories were wrong.The contrarian could of course still argue that changes in collective scientific knowledge were arbitrary and/or unreliable for some other convoluted reason, but to do so would logically require abandoning the premise that instances of self-correction in the history of science mean that the prevailing scientific views which preceded them were necessarily wrong. To acknowledge that such self-correction indicates that an earlier view was wrong is to acknowledge that the average net direction in which scientific knowledge changes is towards increasing accuracy.In turn, to acknowledge that is to admit that any alternate method one might substitute in lieu of the scientific conclusions they’ve rejected is virtually certain to be of inferior reliability to the scientific approach. As such, the only way to properly discredit a prevailing scientific consensus is undertake research uncovering new evidence which cannot be reconciled with the prevailing theory, and/or introducing a superior interpretation which accounts for both the predictions the older view got right and the evidence which falsified it. Merely sitting back and proclaiming that scientists can be wrong isn’t going to cut it. You must show that they are, in fact, wrong in this particular instance, and making lame excuses for ignoring their findings isn’t going to accomplish that. At best, it might dupe some non-scientists and obfuscate public understanding of the issue. Granted, in many cases that’s all it was ever supposed to accomplish, but part of addressing public misconceptions is achieving clarity about the distortions which contribute to them."