Pete, few of us have the technical background to evaluate credentialed experts.

So, to make things more complicated: for any emotion-laden subject, evolution or whatever, there will almost *always* be a few "experts" who seem to most of us to be just as qualified as anyone else, who will passionately support a position considered quite insupportable by 99% of their colleagues.

Only rarely is it because they've figured out something the other 99% haven't. Mostly it's because the handful can't see what is obvious to the others, or, sometimes, just don't want to see it.

I'm pushing nothing here but a rule of thumb. The argument of the overwhelming majority of experts is the one the non-expert should trust. To do otherwise is to assume that the overwhelming majority are just fools and frauds. (Not a good bet in science, at least, because results are constantly being tested and re-tested.)

Usually the majority scientific position is right. And over the past 100 years, it's become even more likely to be right, because investigations and experiments have become better and better.   Scientists also know more and more about their specialized fields.

Once in a great while the vast majority of investigators are wrong, and the handful are proved right. That usually happens only when the vast majority are slow to recognize brand-new discoveries. But it's almost never because old claims that they've long dismissed are suddenly recognized as valid after all.

Mathematicians are the least likely to have the tables turned on them. Social scientists, economists, politicians, and mystics are the most likely to be fooled, because their subjects don't lend themselves so easily to accurate and verifiable predictions.