By the way I know you left... but I am still responding just because you have me interested. It is not intended as hostile.
I looked into that article on consensus you linked earlier. I liked it. I do believe some of it is false.
In order to become and remain a scientist, you need a four-year degree with a major in your chosen scientific field, a four-to-six-year (on average) Ph.D. degree, where you specialized in a particular sub-field of your science and demonstrated yourself capable of making original contributions, and continued to remain active in the field, staying abreast and even participating in many of the latest discoveries.
There have been many cases of people that would be considered scientists without these GATES that are now there before people can use the term. The fact of the matter is there have been "scientists" longer than those gates existed. The true litmus test of a scientist is whether they apply the scientific method. If the scientific method is used then people attempting to replicate and not being able to, or challenging it and finding flaws will weed out the failures. This is a good thing. These 4 years, PhDs, etc are moving goal posts of time. They arbitrarily chosen, but in fact they are not the litmus test of a scientist.
You can also go through ALL of those gates get your labels and titles and cease to follow the scientific method. At that point I contend you would no longer be a scientist.
People (especially these days) can learn MANY perhaps even MOST of the disciplines you get from those multi-year degree programs without ever setting foot in such institutions. It really depends upon commitment and passion. We have examples of mathematicians and other scientific fields that this has happened. They are typically awarded honorary degrees after their work comes to attention and is ACKNOWLEDGED.
Yet what this article stated is FALSE in what I quoted. That is an artificially current set of goal posts that have not always existed and CAN produce scientists, but can also produce people that fail to follow the scientific method. Essentially, I am stating it CAN produce scientists, but it is not a requirement, and it is not guaranteed the person will actually be one.
The skills you develop as a scientist are unique to scientists, and the ability to interpret results in the context of your sub-field and what’s known about it is unique to scientists within that sub-field.
This I tend to agree with. You tend to have areas you are knowledgeable about. A chemist does their thing, a biologist another, a physicist another, and all of these overlap in places, yet they are still very specialized. That doesn't mean it is always that way. That is just the most common manifestation.
And finally — and this is the most important part — in order to obtain an accurate, nuanced, complete picture of a particular problem or set of problems, you need this incredible set of scientific knowledge and experience that is (in most cases) non-transferrable from one discipline to another.
Often this is true. Yet not always. This can be the realm of appeals to authority and can actually lead to blind alleys as people ignore those the believe unworthy to discuss a concept. Most information is out there these days if you are really willing to dig. There are of course some studies that require access to expensive laboratories and equipment, but this is not true of all science. It is not a requirement to be a scientist. It can be a rather daunting barrier for just anyone to try to experiment with such things. Yet that does not encompass all science. So I'll state this quoted section is OFTEN true, but not always.
In other words, unlike in most cases, unless you are a scientist working in the particular field in question, you are probably not even capable of discerning between a conclusion that’s scientifically valid and viable and one that isn’t.
This is not always because it is difficult. It can also be because the information is not made public. Climate Science other than the stochastics/chaos/entropy elements is mostly a large amount of math. So with proper understanding of a theory/hypothesis, and access to the data if someone knows math they can likely discern things.
Yet fields can become rather ARROGANT and club like and forget that assumptions about peoples abilities are often wrong. Yet this also ties into my response to that first quote above.
Overall it is a good article, thanks for sharing it. I personally believe it has flawed assumptions on a number of things and I have explained why above.
TL;DR it is full of a large amount of generalizations.