No. And I would be extremely skeptical about claim b) because the person clearly knows nothing about science or logic (or turns off such knowledge when it comes to religious indoctrination).

For example, a real scientist would know the difference between a major scientific theory tested by many thousands of scientists and backed by mountains of evidence (such as gravity, relativity, evolution, natural selection) and minor technical points in developing fields (such as whether two closely related species of birds are one species or two).

Consensus of course is not enough by itself. It is the evidence that really counts. The consensus only tells you if the evidence is out there to look at. And consensus is not a reason to doubt by itself. If you have an alternative hypothesis, test it. People blinded by religion insist upon believing hypotheses that either cannot be tested or when tested prove false.
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No, this argument is not sounds at all, and it has a lot of holes in it.... and clearly is made by someone with very little knowledge of scientific consensus.

It only point that seems valid is the first argument. besides providing clear evidence that disputes the first point (b), and making unlogical conclusions based on that unproven statement, it DOES matter how long the list of scientists that agree with evolution is.

Why?

Because it is not difficult to find someone, anyone, who disagrees with the majority. However, that does not make them right. It makes them different.
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It would be a fallacy of composition if he said this:

Point: scientific consensus is always right.
Evidence: scientific consensus is wrong in this instance.
Conclusion: scientific consensus is always wrong.

Instead, he said,
Point: scientific consensus is always right.
Evidence: scientific consensus is wrong in this instance.
Conclusion: scientific consensus is not always right.

Therefore, he has not made a fallacy. Scientists have been wrong en masse before, so he is right that scientific consensus is not a valid defense of an argument, and of course, we all know that. We don't say "A is a fact." "Why?" "Because scientists agree." Instead we say, "because the following scientific studies showed it to be the case."

People believed for years that life could come from stones before Louis Pasteur demonstrated that what people thought was spontaneous generation was arising from contamination from existing life. Consensus can be wrong and is not proof.
Source(s):
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#composition
http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Law_of_biogenesis

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Your friend's reasoning is perfectly sound, there are no logical flaws in it, as @srgothard nicely explained.

Critical to his argument is the second point, i.e. the exact nature of his discovery, and whether the results can be replicated and independently confirmed by others. If that turns out to be the case, then there is every reason to re-examine current scientific theories of evolution, and take this new findings into account. Present scientific consensus on the matter would be of little importance, IF the new evidence is clear and unambiguous.
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This argument has a fallacy. The problems are in D and E. Rephrased, this argument goes: if scientific consensus is EVER wrong, then scientific consensus has NO meaning in an argument.

This is not correct.

Scientific consensus is based on experimentation, observation, and also vetting of theories by journals, rival scientists, etc. Scientific consensus is based on overwhelming amounts of evidence -- and while might not always be right, how can all that evidence have NO relevance at all in an argument?

With evolution, you have the entire biological community practically, and there has been criticism for several generations. Furthermore, when a theory proves accurate in predicting and affecting outcomes, that is also confirmation -- and evolution gets confirmed in countless ways all the time (in flu shots, in observations of several generations of plants or Drosophila, etc.). It is an OVERWHELMING consensus to say the least when it comes to evolution.

Also each person in the scientific community who forms this consensus has roughly similar soundness as the scientist who discovers something in Part B (unless she/he has reason to believe she/he is special).

So it is admittedly true that "Consensus" ALONE is not enough to definitively and forever quash the possibility that a theory could be wrong. But the argument you ask about says that it doesn't matter at ALL what the scientific consensus is. This means that the findings of tens of thousands of scientists - and the well-informed opinions of the millions of scientists who view their findings as strong proof of evolution - have no weight in an argument. This would mean that this scientific consensus doesn't even make it _more likely_ for evolution to be true. And scientific consensus, while not __always__ right, makes it much, much more likely to be true.

Also, ALL scientific knowledge is based on scientists finding a way to name and understand concepts and communicate them to others. The discovery in part B was in fact a consensus reached in that lab among those working there as to how to interpret the data (See work done by sociologists-of-science Bruno Latour or Sharon Traweek). If scientific consensus means NOTHING - then science is just a bunch of personal opinions and has no more claim to the truth than the editorial page of the newspaper. This is not good. Consensus is based on evidence and interpretation of evidence, and these mean something. It's not as if scientific consensus is just office gossip for nerds (just a joke - no offense intended - proud nerd myself). Data and interpretations of data are not always right, but if tons of it aren't even _relevant_ to an argument, then why do we bother with evidence at all?

Furthermore, in such a heated debate as evolution, it does matter that scientists who argue for evolution are so great in number that they cannot possibly all come from the same set of religious beliefs. In other words, the list of pro-evolution scientists shows that people of many religious beliefs support evolution; so this proves that evolution is probably not supported due to a particular religious dogma. Since there are very few non-creationists/IDers who argue against evolution (I know of none), it is fair to point out that the consensus appears to have a more neutral motive than the opposing view, which has a strong religious motive to argue for their point. I am NOT saying that the religious makes you less neutral -- just that a really large consensus is ONE way to argue that the position is more LIKELY to be objective.

Finally, a technical note on the fallacy of going from D to E. Some people might read D to mean that consensus ALONE is not enough to argue for something. This could imply that if one wants to argue for evolution, one should be aware of the evidence that led to the consensus and not simply say that there is a consensus. But E states that 'it matters not' that there is a consensus. So D says that consensus is not a COMPLETE argument, but E jumps to saying that consensus means nothing in an argument -- that it can't even be PART of an argument. There is no reason to make this fallacious leap of logic.

So for all these reasons, the fact that a scientific consensus can be wrong does not _logically dictate_ that scientific consensus is meaningless as a valid argument in support of a theory.
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