If you think scientists and the media that “report” their findings are somehow “objective” and above criticism, think again, says Christine Dao on ICR:
… just how much can the lay public trust science news when it enters the mainstream media? The answer may frequently be, “Not much.”
Even under controlled laboratory conditions, major mistakes—and, less frequently, outright instances of fraud—have occurred:
… despite the rigors under which scientific investigations are supposed to be conducted, the lay public should understand that scientific results and conclusions reported in the news will not always be entirely accurate—not just in the reporting, but possibly in the research itself.
The common picture of the purely objective scientist is a myth; a credulous and scientifically ignorant media compound the error every day.
—Mike Gray
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Neither I nor Christine Dao “dismiss science in general.” The problem with “peer review” lies in an all too human tendency to conformity. Every 17th-century scientist “knew” rocks didn’t fall from the sky, and scoffed at reports of what we now know to be meteorite falls; “independent validation” and “multiple, credible, confirming sources” changed their minds after centuries of simply accepting, as you say, what they were told by authority figures.
I think that anyone would readily concede that human endeavors should never be presumed to be perfect or free from fraud, but it’s not clear to me that you should dismiss science in general on that basis. One of the great strengths of the scientific method is that it assumes that people are imperfect and that experiments can be flawed. To combat this, it relies on peer review and independent validation of results. So, at the very least, you could add that it is important for readers to look for multiple, credible, confirming sources for scientific information (and information in general) rather than simply accept what they are told by authority figures.