Mapping Scientific Agreement and Disagreement: The Case for a Dedicated Center

Abstract

From 2022 to 2025, initial steps were taken toward establishing a dedicated center for systematically mapping scientific agreement and disagreement. This paper examines whether creating such a body is both desirable and feasible. We summarize lessons from three pilot studies (COVID-19; the existence of extraterrestrial life; claims of extraterrestrial life discovery), outlining key design choices. We then catalog and analyze prominent objections, drawing on perspectives from philosophy of science, social epistemology, STS, and political philosophy. We distinguish the proposed remit of such a center from Collins and Evans’s Owls: unlike the Owls it would be non-statutory, non-directive, and descriptive, providing auditable snapshots and longitudinal baselines of expert judgment rather than policy or governance prescriptions. Our conclusion is that, under appropriate design constraints, a center of this kind is operationally tractable and normatively defensible, and, if properly designed, can illuminate patterns of disagreement, uncertainty, and agreement without licensing technocracy or elitism.