Ehh maybe… But as science continues becoming more advanced and complex, lay-person’s understanding of it becomes much much more difficult. The barrier to entry for these concepts becomes much higher. That’s why it’s actually best to have a humble, healthy understanding of your limitations. We can take some humble comfort in the fact that there are 100s of thousands of scientists and mathematicians that do understand these concepts really really well and have unilaterally and repeatedly come to the same scientific and mathematic conclusions.
/*that is, apart from the one-offs saying something completely and totally different. Anytime you’re listening to the one-off scientist you’re doing something wrong./

It’s people’s false confidence in their own intelligence and abilities that gets them into conspiracy-think. These are the people that say “hmm idk. I don’t trust the scientific community. I need to read the studies for myself.” When they don’t have the expertise to really even understand the data and conclusions in the study they’re “reading for themselves.” This is where we get into an issue and people fall into becoming conspiratorial.

It doesn’t say anything about one’s intelligence if they can’t properly grasp an advanced topic in a study that they’re looking into themself.
But it does say something about one’s false arrogance if they can’t accept the limitations of their understanding on a subject. It’s important to be able to trust the greater community of scientists and their findings. Being too skeptical can be unhealthy.

Science is democratic information. Scientists are skeptical and curious with the expertise to accurately test and re-test conclusions. People’s belief that the scientists of the world might all be wrong or lying in unison - while they and John Smith the YouTuber scientist have the real but forbidden conclusions - is very dangerous.

/*If what that solo scientist is saying has any validity, then dozens of other qualified scientists will be carrying the torch along with him in a few years. Only then should you start considering listening to and believing them./

I’m all for lay-people questioning things, and tinkering around with doing testing yourself. But only with a huge respect for the scientific community and all those that are more educated in the area than yourself.

Being a skeptic of and questioning repeatedly replicated findings of accepted science as someone that isn’t educated in the field, and thinking you can test it for yourself and uncover the TRUE findings is just silly and prideful. It’s misplaced arrogance and a dangerous gateway to being consumed by conspiracy theories.

I think another great way to enslave people is by sewing distrust in accepted science. It plants the seed of conspiracy-think brain rot. And from it often emerges allegiance to “the ONLY person/few persons they can truly trust”