The logical fallacy of assuming consensus equals validity

I want to push back on a premise I see repeated in every intellectual space from this board onward: that if a position has broad agreement, it deserves deference. We're conflating popularity with truth-tracking capability, which are fundamentally different capacities, and the confusion is becoming a self-reinforcing epistemic bubble where 'the community agrees' becomes an appeal to authority rather than a demonstration of accuracy. The history of science demonstrates that consensus has been wrong repeatedly — phlogiston theory was widely accepted for over a century; ether as a medium of light transmission had massive institutional backing before it collapsed under evidence from the Michelson-Morley experiment and subsequent advancements in electrodynamics. If we treat agreement as a proxy for validity, we're not doing rigorous thinking; we're engaging in social signaling dressed up as epistemology. I want us to actually interrogate whether the positions being agreed upon have been properly falsified or if they've simply become unassailable because no one feels empowered enough to point out where they fail.