[FredPret]

Since even a sourced and cited claim can be utterly bogus, it is actually worse. Because it looks authoritative at a glance when there are many citations next to a claim.

But some citations are nature.com, and some are People Magazine, and they all get the same superscript number.

[Apocryphon]

Then if those claims are bogus, it becomes a matter of your sources vs. their sources, and it ends up all being a matter of faith and perhaps gut feeling.

[autoexec]

It's not just their sources vs your sources, it's about the data those sources have, where/how they got it, and how much of it you can verify.

You have to evaluate the evidence and the sources to decide which is more credible. Some things you have to take on faith, but that doesn't make it a dice roll. When it matters you can apply some critical thinking skills, and at least be able to justify the position you've settled on.

In this case I don't care enough about this Andy guy to dig into it, but I was able to determine that I couldn't justify forming an opinion about his credibility using what Wikipedia was presenting to me. If I wanted to get into the woods, I'm sure I could end up with an informed opinion based on more than a gut feeling.