I've learned to take anything said by the experts with a grain of salt nowadays, mainly after seeing the large conflicts of interest in the food and drug industry. It's best to do your own research as well if you can.

That being said, there are certain institutions and experts that I've found are more trustworthy than others (The Electronic Frontier Foundation for example) so I do usually trust them over the opinions of others. Basically there is a lot of nuance, never blindly trust anything.

Regarding the topic of the Tesla door handles, I've always felt uneasy regarding the safety of them.

That might just be media experts. Newspapers and TV channels keep have a stock list of "experts" they bring on to talk about stuff and they almost always know nothing or are only there for a particular spin.

You can always find washed up academics, ex-industry, ex-government, etc people who will reliably show up to say stuff in return for money. Lawyers do it too.