I think they mean they are putting their faith into the scientists performing the science
It’s not just the scientists, it’s the whole process. You trust that the journals are selecting articles based on their scientific merit. You trust that the journalists reporting on the stories are doing their best to accurately summarize the scientific articles, and that if they get it wrong they’ll issue a correction. You trust that when science makes it into textbooks that those textbooks are accurately summarizing and maybe simplifying the science in a fair way. You trust that teachers or professors who are explaining the science to their students are doing it faithfully and accurately.
The Alpha Wolf theory shows how that sort of thing breaks down. There was a scientific study, and at the time there was no reason to suspect it wasn’t legitimate. The scientist who did the study was accurately describing what he saw. The journal that published it had no reason to doubt it was good science. The peer reviewers did their job well. It just turned out that he was studying captive wolves, and that wolves in the wild didn’t behave the same way. Unfortunately, “wolves live in family units where the parents are in charge” isn’t as interesting a story, so while scientists have been trying to correct the record for a while, there are still people who have been taught by “science” or at least “the modern media and educational system with science at its base” that think that there are “alpha wolves” who take charge of a pack based on being strong and aggressive.
It’s not just the scientists, it’s the whole process. You trust that the journals are selecting articles based on their scientific merit. You trust that the journalists reporting on the stories are doing their best to accurately summarize the scientific articles, and that if they get it wrong they’ll issue a correction. You trust that when science makes it into textbooks that those textbooks are accurately summarizing and maybe simplifying the science in a fair way. You trust that teachers or professors who are explaining the science to their students are doing it faithfully and accurately.
The Alpha Wolf theory shows how that sort of thing breaks down. There was a scientific study, and at the time there was no reason to suspect it wasn’t legitimate. The scientist who did the study was accurately describing what he saw. The journal that published it had no reason to doubt it was good science. The peer reviewers did their job well. It just turned out that he was studying captive wolves, and that wolves in the wild didn’t behave the same way. Unfortunately, “wolves live in family units where the parents are in charge” isn’t as interesting a story, so while scientists have been trying to correct the record for a while, there are still people who have been taught by “science” or at least “the modern media and educational system with science at its base” that think that there are “alpha wolves” who take charge of a pack based on being strong and aggressive.