Isn’t that still circular though? Knowledge of the mainstream research isn’t the same as “knowledge of what’s correct”; the person who holds the non-consensus view may have equal or higher levels of knowledge about the path that got them to non-consensus.

At some level you might reasonably expect what you described to be tautological: the person holding the mainstream view knows more about they things surrounding that view. But do they know the alternatives?

It’d be interest to compare the knowledge level the person holding the consensus view has about the non-consensus view to vice versa.