Editing Consilience (section)

==Deviations==
Consilience does not forbid deviations: in fact, since not all experiments are perfect, some deviations from established knowledge are expected. However, when the convergence is strong enough, then new evidence inconsistent with the previous conclusion is not usually enough to outweigh that convergence. Without an equally strong convergence on the new result, the weight of evidence will still favor the established result. This means that the new evidence is most likely to be wrong.

Science [[denialism]] (for example, [[HIV/AIDS denialism|AIDS denialism]]) is often based on a misunderstanding of this property of consilience. A denier may promote small gaps not yet accounted for by the consilient evidence, or small amounts of evidence contradicting a conclusion without accounting for the pre-existing strength resulting from consilience. More generally, to insist that all evidence converge precisely with no deviations would be naïve falsificationism,<ref name="Lakatos">For example, see [http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/pmo/eng/Lakatos-Falsification.pdf Imre Lakatos.], in ''Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge'' (1970).</ref> equivalent to considering a single contrary result to [[Falsifiability|falsify]] a theory when another explanation, such as equipment malfunction or misinterpretation of results, is much more likely.<ref name="Lakatos"/><ref group=note>More generally, anything which results in a false positive or false negative.</ref>