[RetroTechie]

How are people supposed to tell falsehoods from truth? If such a thing exists - many things aren't b/w, but shades of grey, undetermined, or "it depends".

For every scientific study that shows X, there will be other studies showing !X. People aren't scientists peer-reviewing or questioning paper author's (potential) conflict of interest.

So they seek trusted 'authorities' to tell them what's what. Like friends, co-workers, news anchors, talk show hosts, sometimes government institutions. Or these days... cough. influencers.. cough.

In many wellness situations, there's at least some kind of trust relation between practicioners & clients. So having them serve as source-of-truth is not that strange, really.

[JuanPosadas]

> For every scientific study that shows X, there will be other studies showing !X

No need for even that, most misinformation cites studies that don't even say what the misinformation is citing them for. Even more common is YouTube videos titled "[something] actually happening!" and in the video a dude will ramble about nothing for an hour and nothing actually happened as far as evidence presented in the video goes.

But passing the YouTube video around with a title like that seems to be equivalent to evidence for the modern internet scroller it seems.