Appeal to what authority, though? "Science" isn't an institution with a clear hierarchy, and the public institutions and individuals who lead them tend to be bureaucrats, not actually great scientists, because they've risen to the top of a bureaucracy.

Just as an example, look at "attacks on me are actually attacks on science" Fauci, who is obviously more politician than scientist, openly and admittedly willing to lie about "the science," if he feels like it's for the little peoples' own good, but leans on his status as a Scientist and as "The Good Doctor," as one cover story called him, to prop up his authority.

This isn't how a rational, objective, truth-based tradition like science is done, this is using science as the religion of the State, for the purposes and goals of the Regime, whatever those are.

I agree. To restate or extend: Communication by Scientists in the popular media is challenging. For example, scientists always qualify conclusions, they are trained to avoid using "all", "always", "never", or using concepts like "theory" with mean different thing to scientists vs public--All of which is leveraged by those not in the art to imply "weak" or "uncertain" concepts or conclusions.