the way it currently reads is less like curiosity and more like “how dare you question the judgment of scientists”, as if questioning results isn’t the absolute bedrock of science in the first place
If a paper is published which claims that such-and-such drug shows effectiveness against shingles, it's easy and trivial to say, "Not so fast my friend" followed by any number of statements about Big Pharma, citing previous situations in which a claim was later shown to be false, etc. But while all of those things may, in fact, be true, they don't bring to bear any actual evidence that this particular drug study is flawed and exactly how.
yes, I agree, it would be better if they had a specific criticism of the methodology, but an appropriate response is simply to ask for such a thing, not to jump on them for questioning it at all, which is what happened here. do you see what I mean?
what happened:
>I think there could be contamination of the samples
>oh wow how adorable, what’s next from your big book of ideas, little one?
what would have been healthy:
>I think there could be contamination of the samples
>interesting. do you have a specific criticism of their methodology?
It's also trivial to accept though. And in a world where you can't (for time and effort constrains) check every announcement personally, and where expert proclamations aren't always correct so thay you can just take them as granted, there are still reasons to have an estimation (as a layman but even as a scientist) of something being true or not summarily.
> I'd suggest reading every paper critically, realizing (as most people do) that the results are tentative, and either letting it go at that, or dig in and do the hard work to figure out what may be flawed in the work presented. Then work with the authors or publish a paper of one's own pointing out the flaw and the new resulting analysis.