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There are a few ways to check if a belief is true in science. 1. You can test it via the scientific method, 2. rely on the opinion of a scientist with high credibility, 3. consult scientific consensus, 4. deduce it by math/logical reasoning or 5. infer it using statistics.
One of the biggest problems I see in public debates about "the science" is people are very sloppy about saying why their particular claim is valid. Folks will say "this is what the science says" when they mean this is their personal logical extrapolation from certain experiments.
People confuse the reliability of one scientist that they personally find highly credible with the reliability that comes from the consensus of the whole scientific community. They will say "the science says" when they mean "Dr. Blah says".
Even scientists will make a claim based on the statistics but when confronted that they are using "bad statistics", they will retreat to backing their claim via the scientific method only to later claim extra reliability due to "the data" by which they mean the statistics.
There's a final way that I've seen people use to determine if a scientific belief is true which is "common sense". This is basically one's confidence in one's own ability to know the truth.
They'll say things like you don't need an experiment to know jumping out of a plane will kill you. There are certain propositions that people seem to think are "basically science" without any need for any formal science.
This is most problematic in discussions about science related to public policy. If "the science" is common sense and common sense differs depending on who you're talking to then there's a real problem.
I'll probably write something on this at some point but for now, I'm thinking out loud. As always, I'm interested to hear what people think.
