It isn't like "scientists" (whatever that means) don't also delegate to equipment or hardware manufacturers or (mathema|statis)ticians or compilers (or grad stu

It isn't like "scientists" (whatever that means) don't also delegate to equipment or hardware manufacturers or (mathema|statis)ticians or compilers (or grad students, LOL). Sure they calibrate & cross-check, but while oil spread-out over water is easy to replicate at home in a few minutes with an oil dropper (maybe even with precocious (maybe pre-)pubescent kids not just Feynman Lectures on Physics Caltech Undergrads [1]), "more interesting/complex questions" usually have "full stacks" that are impractical to fully vet in general (see, e.g. Ken Thompson's _Reflections On Trusting Trust_). Epidemic disease coupled with human behavior is definitely getting into "holy crap complex" territory. In its barest essence the problem is this - delegation affords so much that it is basically unavoidable, but trust sure is tricky. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem - searches for how to demarcate trustworthiness. Sorry to say, but there is a long history of failure to get consensus. It's notably a competitive game and as long as anything has been deemed valuable there have been cheap knock-offs (e.g. Fool's Gold), but things like The News you seem to complain of (e.g. Crichton's Gell-Mann Amnesia [2]) or "conclusions", being more abstract than metal (often the metaphorically concrete), are trickier still to discern reliability. It may be the single most central (in latitude-long's of WHAAA? coordinates) problem of today's human condition / experience. I think it's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem BUT the problem applies recursively to advice from anyone about trust/delegation (or about anything else). So, don't trust me. LOL. ;-) I don't think others can really answer these questions for someone. Part of life is learning to live with uncertainty, however precisely modeled. I'm just trying to share a perspective (and several relevant links!) on some of the principles involved with someone who seems interested in and frustrated by the questions. [1] https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/244659/how-did-rayleigh-compute-the-avogadro-number https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/244659/how-did-r... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#Gell-Mann_amn...