Five doctors are challenging a California law that threatens to punish them for deviating from the COVID-19 "scientific consensus."

Five doctors are challenging a California law that threatens to punish them for deviating from the COVID-19 "scientific consensus." https://t.co/7phFp0gZFP

— reason (@reason) November 3, 2022

This was a good point.  Yeah, given how the scientific consensus changes from day to day, week to week, month to month, how can the law rely on a standard? 

Leaving aside the practical challenge of defining the "scientific consensus" at any given time, that consensus is constantly evolving. The very nature of scientific inquiry means that today's majority view may ultimately be proven wrong. The history of the COVID-19 pandemic is littered with such examples. 

The scientific consensus on masking and vaccination has raised intense debate.  

The California Medical Association argued that A.B. 2098 was necessary because some physicians had been "calling into question public health efforts such as masking and vaccinations." Yet both of those subjects have generated vigorous, empirically informed debates among scientists. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initially dismissed the value of general masking, then embraced it as "the most important, powerful public health tool we have." More recently, it has conceded that commonly used cloth masks do little, if anything, to stop coronavirus transmission. That view had previously been deemed "misinformation" egregious enough to justify removing it from social media platforms.