Microorganisms, the greenhouse effect, and celestial bodies Uranus and Pluto were discovered by people without prior scientific credentials. If somebody stumbles upon an interesting observation which cannot be explained by an obvious mistake, it's worth taking and reproducing seriously.
Every raving crank tells this story to themselves about how they're the next Galileo, and that they are the exception that warrants suspending our skills for critical interrogation.
I think this is cool, plausible and warrants investigation, but not suspension of disbelief. There needs to be a better way to go about this than responding "what about Galileo!?" to any principled application of critical thinking.
Your offhand dismissal of citizen science with an anecdote about an endless stair video edit is not a well principled application of critical thinking.
One has to set prejudice to the side and examine the claim being made to apply criticl thinking.
This is a spectacular misread of my comment on practically every level. I noted the absence of numerous contextual things we typically, appropriately(!), rely on as indicators of credibility, gave an example of unsourced video illustrating what can go wrong, and emphasized that I wasn't dismissing it outright! If this is a words-mean-things conversation then those are meaningful points you haven't even pretended to address.
