The scientific community can theoretically reach agreement as to what data means, but in practice there is much less agreement than you gloss over here. Look closely at any subfield of science and you will find a veritable froth of contentious interpretations, that is resolved in many cases only by new findings giving weight to one position over others. But the new data creates more froth of contention. And so the field goes.
This is not a criticism of science. It is the Scientific Method. Absolute truth is not within the purview of science, because there are many false halts on the way to absolute truth, that quickly fall into dogmatic positions, which are anathema to the discovery of new knowledge.
Max Planck, the respected physicist, observed another way that science reaches consensus: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” His observation was verified scientifically in 2015. This is a criticism of scientists, not scientific knowledge, nor the Scientific method.
Scientists are not a superior species of animal from the innumerate public, although some seem to think otherwise, and they are often blind to the fact that they see the world and everything in it through a particular set of assumptions. This is a philosophical understanding of the craft of science, but one borne out of the findings of physical science over the past century, up to today, and continuing, that have forced a complete reconsideration of the foundational paradigm of Science (which is the body of knowledge — all of it contingent — and not the Method ).
Which is to say, a dogmatic scientist is not a scientist, and if they are not dogmatic, but open to new data and new theoretical interpretations, then they are by necessity philosophers as well as scientists. As much as dogmatists wish to declare philosophy dead, it is very much alive and well within the scientific community.
Personally, I dread the day that dogmatists in the scientific community rule the day. That will be the end of us.
