Maybe this is true for some of the advanced sciences. But when it comes to some of the topics that get the most news coverage (psychology, public health, econom

Maybe this is true for some of the advanced sciences. But when it comes to some of the topics that get the most news coverage (psychology, public health, economics) you're not dealing with controlled experiments. So much of it is just random sampling and double blind studies. This work is good. But none of this work is particularly complicated or hard to understand - and so much of the "education" is busy work or learning the "inside baseball" of how to get meaningful results and how to get published. When we are talking about "trust the scientists" no one is really arguing that nuclear scientists or aeronautical engineers don't know what they are talking about. We're really talking about whether we should listen to an epidemiologist just because they have spent so much time looking at these studies (often conflicting!) that they can squint their eyes when they look at a set of data and give a more qualified off-the-cuff opinion.