In some cases you are probably right, but your average guy really doesn't have the wherewithall to discern for himself whether he's reading a truly groundbreaking new idea that will one day turn the whole field in its head. This is what bugs me, for example, about anti-vaxxers. They approach the issue with a cognitive bias (the medical community is corrupt, at least in this regard, and government is out to hurt us all) and they confirm their biases by scouring fringe articles and books looking for wisdom that the so-called experts don't want the rest of us to know because...well, fill in the blank with your favorite conspiracy theory. In the meantime, children are catching measles and other diseases that were once eradicated. I'm not saying that an "expert" is indefatigable, only that a lay person should be willing to start from the intellectually honest position of "I am ignorant" and proceed with an open mind from there. And I like the author's ideas of reading what other experts have to say about a book to gauge the validity of the argument. Media, especially on the right, likes to present some ideas as controversial to us even though the experts in the field find very little controversy whatsoever (evolution, for example).