I think the main thing I expect people to understand is that their compulsory education doesn’t really prepare them to “evaluate the science” for themselves when it comes to specialized fields. Just because you can read a journal article written by doctors or scientists with advanced degrees and years of specialized experience doesn’t mean you can evaluate whether it’s good or not. At some point you have to trust consensus to work. I think most people go off on stupid tangents because they trust the wrong “experts” on the complicated stuff, not because they failed to master more basic stuff. But admitedly, we do draw some strange birds around these parts who seem especially dense and impervious to basic facts.
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