Journalists should be skeptical of all sources including scientists
Big question: HOW?Most journalists in the USA receive basically zero scientific education. At university I majored in two STEM subjects but also took 10 courses in Philosophy, Art, History, Journalism, and Economics. Almost no one majoring in any of those fields except Econ took more than 2-3 STEM courses, and even then there a dedicated watered down courses to ensure those people could graduate (Algebra instead of Calculus, "Physics for Future Presidents", etc.).My high school education in the humanities was also far better than my high school education in STEM, which is typical. And the deplorable state of Mathematics education in US high schools acts as a hard constraint toward improving the situation, since you need a baseline of mathematics literacy before proceeding along any other path in STEM.How are journalists supposed to be productively skeptical when the vast majority of them don't receive anything remotely approaching a truly well-rounded education?Go read the proximal origins paper. How is a journalist who has never seen a derivative, has never taken BIO 101, and whose Science distribution credit was fulfilled by Physics For Future Presidents supposed to dive into the claims in that paper and critically evaluate the surrounding literature? They can't.