>How are we, the laymen, supposed to trust published, peer-reviewed papers?
You are not supposed to.
The laymen really isn't the intended audience of academic publications. The literature is always in flux and inherently unreliable as discoveries are claimed and over decades, proven true or false. Taking a snapshot of the literature at any one time is to accept that a proportion of the claimed truth will be false. Unfortunately the laymen doesn't get this, and they believe that published=true.
As a layman, you should be looking to sources of information that have been vetted for truth, like textbooks. Textbooks are made to distill the most reliable information from the literature by a team of experts.
One paper isn't truth, a dozen independent papers, all pointing to the same thing is. That is what we call the "scientific consensus".
You are not supposed to.
The laymen really isn't the intended audience of academic publications. The literature is always in flux and inherently unreliable as discoveries are claimed and over decades, proven true or false. Taking a snapshot of the literature at any one time is to accept that a proportion of the claimed truth will be false. Unfortunately the laymen doesn't get this, and they believe that published=true.
As a layman, you should be looking to sources of information that have been vetted for truth, like textbooks. Textbooks are made to distill the most reliable information from the literature by a team of experts.
One paper isn't truth, a dozen independent papers, all pointing to the same thing is. That is what we call the "scientific consensus".