Steel-manning their argument, 'distrusting science' doesn't mean they throw the whole thing out, they're just aware that there is disagreement and bullshit going around within the process. As far as I can tell, it's dangerous to try to assess a topic through reading papers alone. A scientist active in the field will have read more widely, be aware of the reputations and biases of the different groups, and likely will have tried some of the published experiments themselves (replication does happen, if it's an interesting result, it's just rarely worth publishing the result).