I think you are arguing semantics. You are talking about what makes good science when evaluated by a person skilled in that particular art the parent poster is talking about how groups of people discover increasingly true pictures of the world.
Human beings are at the very best arrogant and fallible by nature, incapable of truth. When you want to improve your model of the world by including some heretofore unknown to you concept,fact, or set of facts you can opt to learn everything from the ground up in order to develop a deep understanding of the topic or accept or slot in some preexisting truths and models as described by others that you presume to be true.
This presumption of correctness is typically based on their standing with yours or preferably with their own peers combined with your assessment of them based on how well their statements comport with things you know or at least believe to be true. This is typical because the world is incredibly complex and our time here is finite.
Even smart skilled people have to lean on option two a lot outside of their particular area of expertise. When intelligent people do this they ask themselves whose views do people skilled in a particular area think are worth listening to or what on average do people skilled in this area say about something. This is what is meant by scientific consensus. Unintelligent people ask themselves what do my fellow unskilled peers think about this or what do I already think is true and are their any experts who confirm what I already want/believe to be true.
When people say that the scientific consensus is that cigarettes cause cancer they mean I haven't fully examined the complexity of the human lung and the effects of carcinogens on same but I accept the fact that many experts have done so and are telling me that If I keep smoking I'm more likely to die of cancer. This is converse to the person who also doesn't have time to understand how lungs work who eagerly looks for someone with credentials who says its OK if I keep smoking.
People talk about scientific consensus precisely because in a broad population of users you can find at least one party with any given credential willing to espouse any given stupid thing for money or for kicks. It's especially useful if you can get someone who actually IS smart and therefore respected in one area to believe he knows something about a field totally outside his area of expertise and lend existing cred to a stupid idea that an actual expert would dismiss. This strategy is very commonly on display in the discussion about climate change for example.