You do not have permission to edit this page, for the following reasons:

This IP address has been blocked from editing Wikipedia.
This does not affect your ability to read Wikipedia pages.
Most people who see this message have done nothing wrong. Some kinds of blocks restrict editing from specific service providers or telecom companies in response to recent abuse or vandalism, and can sometimes affect other users who are unrelated to that abuse. Review the information below for assistance if you do not believe that you have done anything wrong.

The IP address or range 34.205.0.0/16 has been blocked (disabled) by ‪ST47‬ for the following reason(s):

The IP address that you are currently using has been blocked because it is believed to be a web host provider. To prevent abuse, web hosts may be blocked from editing Wikipedia.
You will not be able to edit Wikipedia using a web host provider because it hides your IP address, much like a proxy or VPN.
We recommend that you attempt to use another connection to edit. For example, if you use a proxy or VPN to connect to the internet, turn it off when editing Wikipedia. If you edit using a mobile connection, try using a Wi-Fi connection, and vice versa. If you are using a corporate internet connection, switch to a different Wi-Fi network. If you have a Wikipedia account, please log in.
If you do not have any other way to edit Wikipedia, you will need to request an IP block exemption.

How to appeal if you are confident that your connection does not use a web host's IP address:
If you are confident that you are not using a web host, you may appeal this block by adding the following text on your talk page: ((unblock|reason=Caught by a web host block but this host or IP is not a web host. My IP address is _______. Place any further information here. ~~~~)). You must fill in the blank with your IP address for this block to be investigated. Your IP address can be determined here. Alternatively, if you wish to keep your IP address private you can use the unblock ticket request system. There are several reasons you might be editing using the IP address of a web host (such as if you are using VPN software or a business network); please use this method of appeal only if you think your IP address is in fact not a web host.

Administrators: The IP block exemption user right should only be applied to allow users to edit using web host in exceptional circumstances, and they should usually be directed to the functionaries team via email. If you intend to give the IPBE user right, a CheckUser needs to take a look at the account. This can be requested most easily at SPI Quick Checkuser Requests. Unblocking an IP or IP range with this template is highly discouraged without at least contacting the blocking administrator.

This block will expire on 05:44, 30 September 2026.

Even when blocked, you will usually still be able to edit your user talk page, as well as email administrators and other editors.

For information on how to proceed, please read the FAQ for blocked users and the guideline on block appeals. The guide to appealing blocks may also be helpful.

Other useful links: Blocking policy · Help:I have been blocked
Your IP address is in a range that has been blocked on all Wikimedia Foundation wikis. The block was made by ‪Jon Kolbert‬. The reason given is Open proxy/Webhost: See the help page if you are affected .
- Start of block: 05:38, 21 February 2024
- Expiry of block: 05:38, 21 February 2029
Your current IP address is 34.205.92.177. The blocked range is 34.205.0.0/16. Please include all above details in any queries you make. If you believe you were blocked by mistake, you can find additional information and instructions in the No open proxies global policy. Otherwise, to discuss the block please post a request for review on Meta-Wiki. You could also send an email to the stewards VRT queue at stewards@wikimedia.org including all above details.

You can view and copy the source of this page:

((Short description|Ideas generally accepted by experts or the public))
((Other uses))
The '''conventional wisdom''' or '''received opinion''' is the body of ideas or explanations generally accepted by the public and/or by experts in a field.<ref>((cite web|url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conventional%20wisdom|title=Conventional Wisdom - Definition of Conventional Wisdom by Merriam-Webster|access-date=2019-12-13))</ref>  In religion, this is known as [[orthodoxy]].((cn|date=October 2020))

==Etymology==
The term is often credited to the economist [[John Kenneth Galbraith]], who used it in his 1958 book ''[[The Affluent Society]]'':<ref name="Leibovich">''E.g.,'' [https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/weekinreview/09leibovich.html Mark Leibovich, "A Scorecard on Conventional Wisdom", ''N.Y. Times'' (March 9, 2008)].</ref>
((bquote|It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom.<ref name="Galbraith">John Kenneth Galbraith, ''The Affluent Society'' (1958), chapter 2.</ref>))
However, the term dates back to at least 1838.<ref name="GBS-Inquiry">((cite book
 |title=An inquiry into the moral and religious character of the American government
 |last=Warner
 |first=Henry Whiting (presumed author is [[Theodore Frelinghuysen]])
 |year=1838
 |publisher=Wiley and Putnam
 |location=New York
 |page= [https://archive.org/details/aninquiryintomo00frelgoog/page/n41 35]
 |url=https://archive.org/details/aninquiryintomo00frelgoog))</ref>((refn|"It will be seen that we appeal, in such a case, neither to the records of legislation nor yet to the conventional wisdom of our forefathers."—(presumably) T. Frelinghuysen|group=n))  ''Conventional wisdom'' was used in a number of other works before Galbraith, occasionally in a benign<ref name="GBS-History">''E.g.,'' [https://archive.org/details/historydemocrac00capegoog 1 Nahum Capen, ''The History of Democracy'' (1874), page 477] ("millions of all classes alike are equally interested and protected by the practical judgment and conventional wisdom of ages").</ref>
or neutral<ref name="GBS-Shallow">''E.g.,'' [https://books.google.com/books?id=rwsCAAAAYAAJ "Shallow Theorists", ''American Educational Monthly'' 383 (Oct. 1866)] ("What is the result? Just what conventional wisdom assumes it would be.").</ref>
sense, but more often pejoratively.<ref name="GBS-Technique-Meditations">''E.g.,'' [https://archive.org/details/techniquethomas00beacgoog Joseph Warren Beach, ''The Technique of Thomas Hardy'' (1922), page 152] ("He has not the colorless monotony of the business man who follows sure ways to success, who has conformed to every rule of conventional wisdom, and made himself as featureless as a potato field, as tame as an extinct volcano."); [https://books.google.com/books?id=TeQz-58sVOkC "Meditations", ''The Life'' (May 1905), page 224] ("in the end he fulfilled the promise of the Lord, and proved that conventional wisdom is short-sighted, narrow, and untrustworthy").</ref>
However, previous authors used it as a synonym for "commonplace knowledge". Galbraith specifically prepended "The" to the phrase to emphasize its uniqueness, and sharpened its meaning to narrow it to those commonplace beliefs that are also acceptable and comfortable to society, thus enhancing their ability to resist facts that might diminish them. He repeatedly referred to it throughout the text of ''The Affluent Society'', invoking it to explain the high degree of resistance in academic economics to new ideas. For these reasons, he is usually credited with the invention and popularization of the phrase in modern usage.

==Accuracy==
((Refimprove section|date=January 2008))
Conventional wisdom is not necessarily true. It is often seen as a hindrance to the acceptance of new information, and to the introduction of new theories and explanations, an obstacle that must be overcome by legitimate [[Historical revisionism|revisionism]]. That is, conventional wisdom has a property analogous to [[inertia]] that opposes the introduction of contrary belief, sometimes to the point of absurd denial of the new information or interpretation by persons strongly holding an outdated but conventional view. Since conventional wisdom is convenient, appealing, and deeply assumed by the public, this inertia can last even after many [[experts]] and/or [[opinion leadership|opinion leaders]] have shifted to a new convention.

Conventional wisdom may be political, being closely related to the phenomenon of [[talking point]]s. The term is used pejoratively to suggest that consistently repeated statements become conventional wisdom whether they are true or not.

More generally, it refers to accepted truth that almost no one seems to dispute, and so it is used as a gauge (or wellspring) of normative behavior or belief, even within a professional context. For example, the conventional wisdom in 1950, even among most doctors, was that [[smoking]] [[tobacco]] is not particularly harmful to one's health.((fact|date=June 2015)) The conventional wisdom today is that it is.  More narrowly, the conventional wisdom in science and engineering once was that a man would suffer lethal injuries if he experienced more than eighteen [[g-force]]s in an [[aerospace]] vehicle, but it is so no longer. ([[John Stapp]] repeatedly withstood far more in his research, peaking above 46 Gs in 1954.

==Integration with scientific evidence==
[[Evidence-based medicine]] is a deliberate effort to acknowledge expert opinion (conventional wisdom) and how it coexists with scientific data.  Evidence-based medicine acknowledges that expert opinion is "evidence" and plays a role to fill the "gap between the kind of knowledge generated by clinical research studies and the kind of knowledge necessary to make the best decision for individual patients."<ref>((cite journal|last=Tonelli|first=Mark R|title=Integrating Clinical Research Into Clinical Decision Making|journal=[[Annali dell'Istituto Superiore di Sanità]]|date=January 2011|volume=47|issue=1|pages=26–30|doi=10.4415/ANN_11_01_07|pmid=21430335|url=http://www.iss.it/publ/anna/2011/1/47126.pdf|access-date=30 December 2011|archive-date=13 September 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220913045401/https://www.iss.it/publ/anna/2011/1/47126.pdf|url-status=dead))</ref>

==See also==
((col div|colwidth=30em))
* [[Anti-proverb]]
* [[Argumentum ad populum]]
* [[Basic norm]]
* [[Boiling frog]]
* [[Common knowledge]]
* [[Common sense]]
* [[Consensus reality]]
* [[Convenience]]
* [[Contrarian]]
* [[Dominant ideology]]
* [[Mass psychology]]
* [[Paradigm shift]]
* [[Social constructionism]]
* [[Social loafing]]
* [[Speaking truth to power]]
* [[Truthiness]]
((col div end))

==References==
===Informational notes===
((Reflist|group=n))

===Citations===
((Reflist))

==Further reading==
*((wiktionary-inline))


((instecon))
((World_view))

[[Category:Consensus reality]]
[[Category:Public opinion]]

Pages transcluded onto the current version of this page (help):

Conventional wisdom (edit)
Template:Ambox (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Blockquote (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Blockquote/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Bquote (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Category handler (view source) (protected)
Template:Citation needed (view source) (protected)
Template:Cite book (view source) (protected)
Template:Cite journal (view source) (protected)
Template:Cite web (view source) (protected)
Template:Cn (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Col div (view source) (semi-protected)
Template:Col div end (view source) (semi-protected)
Template:Delink (view source) (protected)
Template:Div col (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Div col/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Div col end (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Fact (view source) (protected)
Template:Fix (view source) (protected)
Template:Fix/category (view source) (protected)
Template:Hlist/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Template:Instecon (edit)
Template:Main other (view source) (protected)
Template:More citations needed (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:More citations needed section (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Navbox (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Navbox with collapsible groups (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Other uses (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Pagetype (view source) (protected)
Template:Refimprove section (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Reflist (view source) (protected)
Template:Reflist/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Template:Refn (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:SDcat (view source) (protected)
Template:Short description (view source) (protected)
Template:Short description/lowercasecheck (view source) (protected)
Template:Sister-inline (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Sp (view source) (template editor protected)
Template:Wiktionary-inline (view source) (extended confirmed protected)
Template:World view (edit)
Module:Arguments (view source) (protected)
Module:Category handler (view source) (protected)
Module:Category handler/blacklist (view source) (protected)
Module:Category handler/config (view source) (protected)
Module:Category handler/data (view source) (protected)
Module:Category handler/shared (view source) (protected)
Module:Check for unknown parameters (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1 (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/COinS (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Date validation (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Utilities (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist (view source) (protected)
Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Module:Delink (view source) (protected)
Module:Disambiguation/templates (view source) (protected)
Module:Format link (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Hatnote (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Hatnote/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Hatnote list (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Message box (view source) (protected)
Module:Message box/ambox.css (view source) (protected)
Module:Message box/configuration (view source) (protected)
Module:Namespace detect/config (view source) (protected)
Module:Namespace detect/data (view source) (protected)
Module:Navbar (view source) (protected)
Module:Navbar/configuration (view source) (protected)
Module:Navbar/styles.css (view source) (protected)
Module:Navbox (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox/configuration (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox/styles.css (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Navbox with collapsible groups (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Other uses (view source) (template editor protected)
Module:Pagetype (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/config (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/disambiguation (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/setindex (view source) (protected)
Module:Pagetype/softredirect (view source) (protected)
Module:SDcat (view source) (protected)
Module:String (view source) (protected)
Module:TableTools (view source) (protected)
Module:Unsubst (view source) (protected)
Module:Wikitext Parsing (view source) (protected)
Module:Yesno (view source) (protected)

Return to Conventional wisdom.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_wisdom"