Scientific Errors Propagate Faster Than Corrections, Leading to 'Synthetic Consensus'
The scientific community is facing a growing challenge where errors in research are propagating through knowledge systems faster than they can be corrected, leading to a phenomenon termed 'synthetic consensus'. This occurs when the perceived credibility of a claim arises from its widespread repetition and reproduction across various knowledge systems, rather than from independent empirical validation. Historically, science was considered self-correcting, with errors eventually identified and displaced through replication and critique. However, this assumption relied on the rate of error correction keeping pace with error creation. Today, this balance is disrupted. Errors are now widely cited, summarized, or reused without re-evaluation of underlying evidence, embedded across multiple layers like papers, reviews, textbooks, and AI systems, and recursively reinforced with each reuse, increasing their apparent legitimacy regardless of evidentiary strength. This differs from traditional scholarly consensus, wh... 
