[marginalia_nu]

> The dark side of this mentality is that it creates the same situations whereby people believe their own intuitions are equal to professional scientific research. If you believe no one knows what they’re doing and all adults are just making it up as they go, why would you listen to experts instead of inserting your own opinions based on your Facebook research or some quip you saw online?

Well there's a reason to resist this notion on the grounds that knowledge is personal, not transitive. Following John Carmack on twitter does not transfer the ability to design game engines onto me, even though he surely has deep expertise in the area.

My opinions may not be the result of professional scientific research, but that is also true even if I echo the opinions of someone who claims to be a practitioner of such. At least if we accept a definition where justified true belief is necessary for knowledge. Either I know something, or I don't know it. There is no middle ground where I know something by extension of faith in an authority that claims to know it. That's the entire point of science, it isn't doctrinal! The scientific authority may well possess an ability to produce true statements through their knowledge of the topic, but I don't share this knowledge by parroting their true statements; I need to understand why in order to know.