Knowledge Based Consensus
When should a consensus be considered scientific, or “knowledge-based”? When the pieces of the puzzle fit together, you have a consilience of evidence. When everyone is using the same standards of evidence and understanding the same terminology, you have social calibration. When agreement is widespread across many different groups of people from many different backgrounds, you have social diversity. When you have all three, you have a knowledge-based consensus and you can be confident that it’s correct.