I actually thought of physics as an example of this, for quantum interpretations: you sometimes see claims that MWI is an absurd theory pushed by a few fringe physicists and popularizers and cranks, or alternately, that every good physicist takes MWI seriously. What do the occasional small surveys reveal? Something in between: a minority or perhaps plurality holding to MWI with agnosticism on the part of many—MWI being now a respectable position to hold but far from dominant or having won.
MWI is not really a good example, but Bohmian mechanics is. These guys have their own publications, they cite each other, they have special conferences even.
Most of the cliques are not visible unless your are in the subfield, however.
I am reminded of a series of documents uploaded to the arxiv earlier this year, each one reporting the results of a survey taken at a distinct conference, and supposedly revealing a “snapshot” of the participants’ atitudes towards foundational issues (such as interpretations). Although the first document seems to be making some fairly strong claims about academic consensus, the following two are a little more conservative. The final one says something very similar to the original post here; their results suggest that,
‘there exist, within the broad field of “quantum foundations”, sub-communities with quite different views, and that (relatedly) there is probably even significantly more controversy about several fundamental issues than the already-significant amount revealed in the earlier poll.’
I actually thought of physics as an example of this, for quantum interpretations: you sometimes see claims that MWI is an absurd theory pushed by a few fringe physicists and popularizers and cranks, or alternately, that every good physicist takes MWI seriously. What do the occasional small surveys reveal? Something in between: a minority or perhaps plurality holding to MWI with agnosticism on the part of many—MWI being now a respectable position to hold but far from dominant or having won.
MWI is not really a good example, but Bohmian mechanics is. These guys have their own publications, they cite each other, they have special conferences even.
Most of the cliques are not visible unless your are in the subfield, however.
I am reminded of a series of documents uploaded to the arxiv earlier this year, each one reporting the results of a survey taken at a distinct conference, and supposedly revealing a “snapshot” of the participants’ atitudes towards foundational issues (such as interpretations). Although the first document seems to be making some fairly strong claims about academic consensus, the following two are a little more conservative. The final one says something very similar to the original post here; their results suggest that,
‘there exist, within the broad field of “quantum foundations”, sub-communities with quite different views, and that (relatedly) there is probably even significantly more controversy about several fundamental issues than the already-significant amount revealed in the earlier poll.’
http://arxiv.org/abs/1301.1069
http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.2719
http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.4646
Some surveys reveal that; other surveys reveal one of the two positions you mentioned in the first sentence of your comment.