Hard disagree here. Having a PhD only says you got hired for a PhD and spent years doing stuff. Doesn't make your opinion better than a scientific consensus. Having a Nobel Prize means that you won the lottery when you chose your field of research (if you were lucky enough to have a choice there). There is a famous "regression to the mean" with Nobel Prizes who then have a tendency to be confidently wrong for the rest of their life.
Not saying that PhDs and Nobel Prizes are worth nothing of course. What I'm saying is that science is about consensus. It's okay to believe that the consensus is wrong and to try to prove it, but until you manage to do it, you have to admit that the consensus is the best theory we have.
> This is not to take a position but to point out that they can hardly be idiots; if you think they are, this needs to be made plain.
I don't think they are. I think people tend to misunderstand how science works.
If the vast majority of scientists in a field agree on something, and few disagree, that's perfectly normal. Now when you take one scientist from the minority, realise that they are not stupid, and conclude from there that it would be rational to believe that the large consensus is wrong... then you are doing it wrong.
In other words, a scientist could say "you should believe the consensus about global warming, but my research is about trying to prove them wrong. Until them I have failed, given that the consensus is what it is, and therefore you should not base your survival on my ideas". Of course they won't, and in all fairness it shouldn't be their job to say that. We really just need people to understand how science works, and stop thinking that they can select the one study they like and say "it's true, I choose to believe this one".