Disclaimer: following is only my opinion and depends strongly on my experience.
First of all, I get the idea. I think I understand where it is comming from. If you are planing on doing something you dont understand, you will likely consult experts. If you ask 5 plumbers what to do about your problems with plumbing and they all give you the same answer, your best bet would be following that answear.
Secondly, I dont believe there is such a thing as “scientific community” in a way thats represented publicly. You have thousands of scientists working all over the world trying to find a solution to something a theory that explains something or just purely analyzing something as objectively as possible without injecting any opinions into data. Many of these people are working to prove the exactly oposite thing. The information they may be working with may wary and concusions they reach using different methods may wary also as well. Some may just analyze a theory to find if its right of wrong and reach opposite conclusions. There have to be houndreds of thousands contradictory papers published all over the world and so many of them are likely wrong by todays knowledge.
Now there are trends in science, just like there are trends in any profession. Some opinions are held by many scientist and certain approaches to solving problems are popular during certain time periods. A few years ago a large porion of scientists may have believed the HIV may be cured using cerian proceses trigered by some type of medication and few years later most have abandoned it. Many people are looking at what others are doingto come up with ideas for their problems.
Now that I have expressed what I believe the “scientific community” is, how would you define what their “consensus” is. Are we going to study all the different conclusion specific groups reached on a certain topic? You’ll find a lot of contradictory stuff.
I believe that a lot of what people consider “scientific community” is a very small group of “celebrity” scientists who get all the media attention. Dont get my wrong, some of them are experts and did a lot to earn the status they have. Anf yes, many of them have reached consensus on many matters, but thats just a few people. You would find that a lot of scientists dont agree with them at all. Or they dont agree with their methodology, or their conclusions. And there will be a large part that will admire them, agree with everything and dream of such a status. Now add selective media/political filter to the small group and you get your “scientific community consensus”.