Any fact is better established by two or three good testimonies than by a thousand arguments.
Finally, 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.
Fact is based upon vulgar matter.
Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.
In science, "fact" can only mean confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.
No law of nature, however general, has been established all at once; its recognition has always been preceded by many presentiments.
One one hand, it's important to hear out the other side and try to reason with them using facts. The problem arises when we can't even agree on what the facts are. I've found myself walking away from debates when the person I'm talking to just won't acknowledge long-established facts.
Before anything can be reasoned upon to a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or data, to reason from, must be established, admitted, or denied.
Transmit the established facts; do not transmit words of exaggeration. If you do that, you will probably come out all right.
The American public recognizes truth versus assumption, presumptions, and the personal opinions of witnesses without firsthand knowledge.
