Hi Ostracon, First off, you seem to be arguing that we can't know if there is a scientific consensus or not? But of course this is absurd. Before Einstein, the scientific consensus was in the camp that stated F = M * A, and after Einstein, and some additional scientific testing, everyone jumped to the new camp, for which Einstein was the first lone supporter. Both before, and after Einstein, most everyone would agree there was a clear scientific consensus about the differing relationships between force, mass, and acceleration. Your description of this 'model' is just one of many possible distributions of experts within any group. And your example distribution, and the related odds, does not apply to either of these two before and after scientific consensus examples. One goal of canonizer.com is simply to measure the above scientific revolution process with as much rigor as possible (with far more rigor than anything to date). It seeks to definitively document who are the first supporters of 'correct' theories, before the rest of the sheepish heard shows up, as they are nipped in the heals by the guide dogs of new demonstrable scientific proof. You want to definitively track this kind of reputation so we can, in the future, create canonization algorithms that give far more weight to the camps of these leading mavericks right? Sure it isn't yet perfect. You are treating 'consensus' as a qualitative term, where I normally use it as a quantitative term (Probably given that this is the first open survey tool anywhere close to being capable of rigorously, quantitatively measuring such) If you are not willing to accept 75% as not being considered a 'consensus' then might I ask you what percentage would be considered a consensus? How would you prefer to say something like "camp X has 51% consensus"? Also, as of this writing, there are no clear qualophobe camps being represented by any one yet, expert or not, in the topic on [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88 The best theories of consciousness]. In other words, at least for all participators so far, they are all unanimously qualophiles. I would argue this is a very telling sign, even at this early and still far from comprehensive survey phase. And that this fact, or how much support there is for each side of this issue, is currently grossly being misrepresented in the current qualia article on Wikipedia. We recently surpassed more than 20 K published and peer reviewed articles on the topic of consciousness, as documented in Chalmers [http://consc.net/mindpapers Mind Papers Bibliography]. The critical problem is nobody can see any signal (where there is the most consensus) from the noise (where there is no agreement) in all this mostly trash, simply because nobody is yet measuring for such. A bunch of us believe that if we can make this scientific consensus stand out from all the trash and noise, everyone will finally get the message of why, what, where, and how to scientifically look for qualia. And once all the sheepish researchers still following Dennet, and the like, finally see this signal standing out from all the 20K pieces of noise, it will finally enable some of them to make what a bunch of us predict will be the greatest and most world changing scientific achievement of all time - the complete theoretical understanding, and demonstrable scientific validation of what we, and our consciousness are. Brent

The Wikipedia editor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ostracon Ostracon] recently presented some arguments about whether or not canonizer.com, specifically when using the [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/53/11 Mind Experts] algorithm was good enough to be considered rigorous or scientific on the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Qualia#Scientific_consensus_and_peacocks talk page of the article on Qualia]. In order to avoid polluting myriads of talk pages on controversial topics repeatedly, with this meta issue, and so that others interested in this issue may have easy central access to all this type of information, I've copied his arguments here (And I'll also included my response in this thread): ================================================== In a population there are experts and non-experts. Anyone participating at canonizer is either an expert or not an expert. The probability that a group has an expert is 1:2 or 50% chance. The probability that a group has two experts is 4:1 or 25% chance. It is reasonable to assume that a consensus would require a large group. The larger the group, the lesser the probability that all members are experts. Furthermore, assume that an expert has 100% chance to create a camp for an expert, whereas a non-expert has a chance of 50% to select an expert and 50% to select a non-expert. In a group of eight people our model predicts that half would be experts and half would be non-experts, thus 4 experts and 4 non-experts. The experts choose their camps - selecting 4 experts - and the non-experts choose their camps - selecting 2 experts and 2 non-experts. In a group of 8 our model predicts that there would be 6 (4+2) expert camps and 2 non-expert camps. The probability that a non-expert camp would be selected over an expert camp is 2:6 or 1:3. Our model predicts that every third time a final vote (per group) is cast a non-expert is chosen over an expert. Few scientists would be satisfied with being 67% right. The certitude required for a scientifically valid conclusion on who is an expert has not been met. Now, given the more sophisticated Mind Expert algorithm (as it is described [http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/53/11here]) the probability would turn out like this: * First drawing (by the selecting population): Experts 50%, Non-Experts 50% (of the selected population). * Second drawing (by the selected samples): 75% Experts (Experts choice 50% + Non-experts choice 25%), 25% Non-experts (Non-experts choice). The minds behind the Mind Expert algorithm should be applauded for reducing the probability from 1:3 to 1:4. However, 75% is still not enough for a method to be deemed 1) "scientific" and 2) "rigorous". (1) If someone by the word scientific refers to the opinion of experts, the reasoning above suggests that only half of the opinions may come from experts. (2) A consensus is defined as an "agreement in the judgement or opinion reached by a group as a whole" [http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=consensus *]. Consensus is not 75 people voting for one option with 25 people disagreeing and voting for another. First when juries or democratic constellations fail to reach a consensus they vote. A majority vote is not equivalent to consensus. If the reasoning above holds, there is reason to consider canonizer a non-scientific and non-rigorous application, but right in 75 times out of 100.