I get where you're coming from, Tim, but declaring at the top "Researching is a skill set, and no, you don’t have it" sounds just like what a gatekeeper would tell me.

I'm a degreed engineer with 30+ years of real-world problem solving experienc. 25+ year ago I started my own company engineering consulting company. I'd say I know quite a bit about research, or I wouldn't still be in business.

Now again, I get where you're coming from, but starting with the broad brush of "you don't know what you're doing" is a poor way to try to convince people to change their ways. It is a good way to get lots of people in your bubble to give you an "attaboy" and people outside your bubble to call you an asshole. Neither is productive.

There are lots of people I know who don't have degrees and can still do research. There are even people who have degrees completely unrelated to science (e.g. a poli-sci degree from Tulane) who I'm confident can learn to research correctly.

Elites are good and needed, no doubt. But elites disagree. Elites can be corrupt. We can see elites getting caught in lies and trying to deny it. We can see powerful people in media choosing which elites are allowed to speak based not on credentials, but on politics. All of those facts leave people no choice but to try to do their own research.

We need to get money out of politics to dial back the corruption from 11. That is the root problem.