you can always chase down WHY “some scientists think”.
The scientist will either be like “i have in previous tests inserted first a balloon this same size, and then a clay ball this same size into my mouth, both without issue, and i therefore am confident this orange will fit” or they might be like “well i’ve had my mouth my whole life and it just really seems like this whole orange will fit in there without any problems” and after a little experience in this area you’ll be able to get a feel for which scientist thoughts are duly scientific and which are just, a person who is a scientist has had a thought.
the interesting ones are where someone is like, “i have found some evidence that such and such is true” and other scientists say, “that evidence is not good enough to convince me, here’s why” and then you get to look at the first person’s evidence, and read why the second person doesn’t accept it as proof, and then sort of make up your own mind what you think the answer probably is based on that – but you have to be willing to admit you were wrong if further evidence is found that proves things that direction.
Like, not long ago, some scientists were like “we think we’ve possibly invalidated a bunch of MRI scans of living brains that some scientists thought might accurately determine things like where creativity happens etc” and then you go and read the reason they think that is they’ve gotten the exact same range of results doing the exact same scans but instead of a living person’s brain they scanned a dead salmon… and then you can say to yourself, “yeah, if they think that the previous results aren’t valid because they did the same experiment with a dead fish instead of a live person and got those same results, then i think they’re probably right” but you still have to respect the fact that the sample size is, at this point, way too small to make unequivocal statements
