You're right, science shouldn't just be reserved for the PhDs. But the PhD is likely to have insight and experience that will make a lot of assertions false, av

You're right, science shouldn't just be reserved for the PhDs. But the PhD is likely to have insight and experience that will make a lot of assertions false, avenues of research redundant and generally be able to tell the different between science and not science. There's no restriction on laymen studying, researching and trying to understand new frontiers of science, however just as the PhDs don't have a monopoly on science (and as you point out, they're far from perfect), neither do lay people have a monopoly on reinterpreting reality through the misinterpretation of facts. tl;dr: You're entitled to examination of facts and to be examined for your own research. You're, however, not entitled to your own reality. Which is what happened in the article.