> But one tenant of scientific thought is that truth and factuality are not measures of an individual's or society's belief, but rather, they are discovered by

> But one tenant of scientific thought is that truth and factuality are not measures of an individual's or society's belief, but rather, they are discovered by experiments whose results can be replicated. Discovery and replication can be complex affairs though: was the experiment competently executed, was it interpreted the right way, did any attempt at replication properly replicate the conditions of the original, is there theory to go along with the experiment and how convincing and coherent is that theory, and so on and so on. And if there are points of disagreement, good luck trying to figure out who is right without any domain knowledge. So, yes, ultimately, as a non-scientist in a lot of cases your best bet is to look at what the scientific consensus is, rather than trying to be a scientist yourself.