Your comment suggested that the title and reputation of a scientist was the fundamental reason you are "told" (in a somewhat conspiratorial big-brother fashion) to listen to them. And that - because sometimes mistakes are made - you can't trust an overwhelming consensus. That's obviously not true, and furthermore it's not the fundamental reason to listen: the fundamental reason is that it checks out. People have done gone and checked the papers/data. There have been multiple systematic reviews of other existing studies. It's not a single novel result. The massive consensus on this issue is the replication.
If you're not an expert and don't want to invest in becoming one, it's totally rationale to trust a network of experts to - roughly speaking - do their work properly. I'm sure you can find plenty of people advocating that. But my default position would be not to trust a single novel result, regardless of how smart or prestiged the authors were. Strong claims require strong evidence. I rarely hear any scientist or advocate saying otherwise.
If you're not an expert and don't want to invest in becoming one, it's totally rationale to trust a network of experts to - roughly speaking - do their work properly. I'm sure you can find plenty of people advocating that. But my default position would be not to trust a single novel result, regardless of how smart or prestiged the authors were. Strong claims require strong evidence. I rarely hear any scientist or advocate saying otherwise.