1. Science absolutely has something to do with consensus, as a practical matter. Because humans are agents of "bounded rationality", and humans do the science. We have to defer to expertise not because it's the "spiritually ideal" thing to do or whatever, but because we have no choice.

2. Science is not about belief in the ignorance of experts-- on the contrary, expertise in science is all about having the skills and the knowledge to characterize and quantify uncertainty.

What does science have to do with experts?

When somebody announces that a certain kind of particle exists and has certain properties... And they're equipped with all of these arguments, backed by experiment, which will help you come to the same conclusion. That's science, right?

The invitation to perform the experiment, replicate the result, and start using stories about things you can't see (e.g . electrons) to explain the world around you, that's consensus building, because now you're using the same stories as everyone else who has followed the same process.

For best results we should be skeptical about any notion that those stories won't later be superceded by different ones (i.e. skeptical that they are true), but that's as much a belief in our own ignorance as it is in the belief in anyone else's. So where do the experts come in?