Please Answer My 12 Questions on Your Attitude Towards Science

What is your view on the following issues: vaccines, global warming, sex and gender, the origins of life, and abortion?  

My guess is that your views are varied, some black and white, others grey or nuanced. But each of your stances will have at least one thing in common: they will, at least to some extent, be dependent on, for want of a better phrase, ‘what science tells us’. So, what I really want to know is this: do you have a view of ‘what science tells us’ that you can apply consistently to each one of these five issues? Because I have the impression that many of us, probably myself included, vary our attitude towards science according to the particular issue. 

I can think of only one reasonable justification for doing this. If an ethical question were speculative and unlikely to make any actual difference to the sum of human happiness any time soon then it might be acceptable to take a fairly maverick, or experimental attitude towards ‘the science’. But this is hardly the case in the five subject areas I’m listing, which are, to remind you: vaccines, global warming, sex and gender, the origins of life, and abortion.

So here’s my challenge, to you and to me. Can you answer these twelve questions about your attitude towards science in a way that you would apply equally to vaccines, global warming, sex and gender, the origins of life, and abortion. I’d love to know your answers. Here goes:

1. Do you accept the premise that one’s attitude towards science should be the same for each of the issues I’ve listed? If not, why not - and which among these 5 issues do you think should be governed by the same approach? 
2. Do you think that we ought to be guided by a consensus among top scientists? If so, what counts as a top scientist, and what counts as a consensus? 
3. What about when there isn’t a consensus: how should we judge competing claims in an emerging field of scientific knowledge? 
4. What should our reaction be when a few scientists try to challenge a consensus that has existed for hundreds of years? Should we give them short shrift until they’ve persuaded the world’s top scientists or give them space to make their case? 
5. When is it acceptable or even necessary to stick up for an opinion held by a minority of scientists?
6. Is there ever a case for supporting non-scientists in challenging the scientific views of scientists? 
7. Is your view of a scientist's claims affected by what you know about their political or religious beliefs? Should it be?
8. When dissenting scientific voices all believe in the same contested ideology or religious belief, does this invalidate their scientific views? (and vice versa, with majority, approved scientific opinion)
9. How much credence should we give to a scientific consensus in powerful institutions in which scientists with dissenting views are not offered positions?
10. What, if anything, can we learn from historical instances where scientists have been shown to be wrong, or to have collaborated in unethical practices or with terrible regimes? Is this relevant to any of the six issues under consideration? 
11. Are scientists more or less prone to moral or intellectual failure than the average person - or are they about the same?
12. What are the rights, responsibilities and limits of non-scientists in a debate that is dependent on ‘what science tells us’?

I realise that’s a lot of quite complicated questions. I’d love to see your answers to all 12, but if you prefer you could just write two or three sentences summing up an attitude towards science that you would be prepared to apply consistently across all areas.  Please reply on here or on Facebook, or if you prefer, message me on the contact form on the bottom right of the blog. Thanks.