The reason that "nobody's going to like it," as you say, is that it's an old and tired logical fallacy, which is sometimes called ipse dixit.

I want all readers reading this to know that what's being propounded here in Ethan Siegel’s article is arrantly, stupidly, dangerously misbegotten and wrong.

You do not nor will you ever develop "a scientifically literate society" by telling people to "do a lot more listening to relevant, appropriate experts." This statement is itself a textbook example of the opposite of scientific literacy: it's absurdly subjective and over-generalized terminlogy. It also presupposes that "relevant, appropriate experts" do not sharply and frequently disagree, which they do.

I want all readers to know that science itself rests upon a more fundamental discipline -- a discipline that most scientists know very little about -- and that discipline is epistemology, which comes from the Ancient Greek word episteme, which means knowledge.

More fundamental than the scientific method is the human faculty of reason, which is the faculty "that indentifies and synthesizes reality," as Spinoza well defined it. Reason, logic, induction, deduction -- these are all more fundamental than the scientific method. They underpin and undergird it, and science is built upon their efficacy.

The proper method for developing "a scientifically literate society" is emphatically not, reader, what is espoused here in this sloppy article: the old and disastrous argument from authority repackaged a little (not much), and which is still among the most popular of fallacies going. That, I repeat, is not how you create and maintain a scientifically literate society. In fact, that's the precise opposite of how — it is the religious leader asking you to just listen to “the relevant, appropriate” authorities — and anyone who encourages any such wild, reckless notions is asking you to suspend your own thinking, reasoning, critical faculty and to replace it with belief in the authority of "relevant, appropriate experts."

This is also known as blind belief, which is also known as faith.

Faith is diametrically opposed to the human faculty of reason.

Faith in experts -- any expert, no matter how "relevant and appropriate" anyone tells you these experts are -- is the polar opposite of scientific literacy. It is also, not coincidentally, the highroad to hell, and to dogmatic grandstanding as well, and to a complete politicization and corruption of science. When, for instance, Barack Obama's quondam science-advisor John Holdren, "a relevant and appropriate expert" in the eyes of a great many people -- too many -- advocates eugenics in his book Ecoscience, saying (and I quote) "Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society” -- you should, reader, by all that's accurate and true, have at your disposal the critical faculty to discern the unmitigated and appalling scientific illiteracy found in this atrocity exhibition masquerading as science, coming from this "relevant, appropriate expert."

Human beings have at their disposal only one fundamental tool and method for knowing truth from falsehood, for distinguishing accuracy from inaccuracy, and that one tool and method is not, I say to you again in the most emphatic voice imaginable, "listening to relevant, appropriate experts" — which in actuality leads only to mental disintegration — but is, rather, the cultivation of your human faculty of reason, which identifies and integrates the data of existence.

I'm implore you all to ignore any advice, no matter how sophisticated it may (or may not) sound, that asks you to in any way suspend your own independent judgement in favor of "relevant, appropriate experts," and which asks you as well to suspend the thinking critical faculty of your own beautiful reasoning brain, with all its awesome power you’re being asked to suspend, and which awesome power is activated and maintained by you and you alone in an act that no human can perform and maintain for any other human, and which is the full and final act of human will — the very locus and quiddity of individuality and individualism, which is not nor ever was "rugged."

Individualism is not "rugged," reader, and every time you hear or see that cliche, that silly popular fallacy — always, of course, with the requisite “quotation marks” — you may immediately and entirely dismiss it from your mind, never to be revisited again: dismiss it for the total canard that it is. Individualism is nothing more or less than this: your essential "I," which in turn is your ability to activate and maintain your brain's beautiful capacity to discern, to determine, to think, to know, to reason.

Anyone — and I mean anyone — who asks you to subvert this to “relevant, appropriate experts” is categorically, unequivocally wrong. They’re also espousing a dangerous epistemological doctrine of pure, undiluted dogmatism.