> Its more likely that a random individual's opinion about a random niche of scientific study will be wrong than that of an individual trained on that niche
Well ... this intuition should definitely be true in theory, but in practice some fields are sufficiently distorted by biases (financial, ideological) that it's possible to be more correct as a random individual than an individual trained on a niche. The random Joe Schmuck may or may not have less knowledge, but they definitely have less career-related bias and that is often decisive.
There are plenty of examples where ordinary people manage to systematically beat the experts. A good recent example was the COVID lab leak theory. The entire field of virology and public health came down on one side of that issue, even though it was obvious that a lab accident was highly plausible, and then it turned out they all knew were all lying through their teeth and did it deliberately anyway. The rando nobodies who said "yeah, well, I don't trust the experts" came out ahead and this is now widely acknowledged. In the UK both Boris Johnson and his at-the-time health secretary have admitted that it is the most likely explanation for where COVID came from.
Ultimately, training is of no use if incentives cause people to mislead.
Well ... this intuition should definitely be true in theory, but in practice some fields are sufficiently distorted by biases (financial, ideological) that it's possible to be more correct as a random individual than an individual trained on a niche. The random Joe Schmuck may or may not have less knowledge, but they definitely have less career-related bias and that is often decisive.
There are plenty of examples where ordinary people manage to systematically beat the experts. A good recent example was the COVID lab leak theory. The entire field of virology and public health came down on one side of that issue, even though it was obvious that a lab accident was highly plausible, and then it turned out they all knew were all lying through their teeth and did it deliberately anyway. The rando nobodies who said "yeah, well, I don't trust the experts" came out ahead and this is now widely acknowledged. In the UK both Boris Johnson and his at-the-time health secretary have admitted that it is the most likely explanation for where COVID came from.
Ultimately, training is of no use if incentives cause people to mislead.