I still feel the ideal should be a search for truth, even if human institutions do the work. I'm a fan of Feynman's stuff:

>...As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says, "Science teaches such and such," he is using the word incorrectly.

>Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, "Science has shown such and such," you might ask, "How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?"

>It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/

I always took that for granted but seems some don't.

> > It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/

There are so many cases in which the interpretation of the data is difficult. There are many cases in which there are either experiments with seemingly conflicting data, and two different plausible interpretations of existing data. I consider myself highly intelligent and reasonably well informed and yet, were I the one setting policy, I would still need to rely on the opinions of experts in various fields to interpret what data we have on various issues.