[MD] Conventional wisdom?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ian]
They only added the qualifier "conventional" after you've discovered 
it's not the "actual" scientific knowledge - with hindsight.

[Arlo]
You know, I was going to say that this is evidence of an S/O distinction 
in our culture, but I wonder if a more accurate comparison would be to 
two of Peirce's methods for fixing belief. That is, "conventional" in 
some way refers to belief established through "authority" (or even 
"tenacity", I suppose) and "actual" points to empirical methodology?

In this sense, what begins as "empirical" among the people actually 
involved in the examinations radiates out as "conventional" to people 
not so involved but who (pragmatically) accept the conclusions of the 
empirical investigators as "truth". So the same idea, say the 
composition of moon rocks, would be "empirical" to some but 
"conventional" to others, and the empirical crowd is always the first to 
alter/update/revise, which creates a "gap" between those involved and 
those (again, pragmatically) accepting the authority of those involved.

In this case, its not that "conventional" is always, ipso facto, 
"wrong", its just at times we see this lag.

This reminds me of a bit by comedian Lewis Black about "milk", basically 
saying that because the "empirical" crowd reversed decision on the 
health benefits/concerns of milk, that the "conventional wisdom" is all 
amok, no one really knows if milk is good for you or bad for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXS5GBuk-GQ

Or maybe its just the coffee talking...