>Scientific concensus

You know, there's something that's been bothering me for a while. In personal experience, whenever I see someone trying to back up a controversial opinion, is often by saying "is scientifically proven", like slapping the scientifical label excempts it from criticism.

I'm a student of psychology, so when I heard this argument I decided to check the sources for LW2 videos. And the first thing that struck me was that most of them were charged, and all I got for free were the abstracts and summaries by the press. Now, that's not a bad thing in itself, intelectual property and what not. But if that's all you read, it should never be enough. In math terms, it would be like having the equation, the result, but not the process to get there, and hence no way to see if there was a fuck up along the way.

So what I've been wondering is how many people saying this have actually checked the sources? As in, full read. Because frankly, reading what little information I got and could gather on my own, made me raise more than a few eyebrows. I mean, it could be (or not) justified, but taking any studie at face value should be major heresy in any scientific field.