Demarcation that Makes the Layperson Smart

Abstract This paper presents an easy-to-use and layperson-friendly general demarcation for recognising scientific claims. The research was inspired by Gerd Gigerenzer’s approach to heuristics, which consists of a few yes or no questions and various ideas from social epistemology, such as Longino’s venues, Goldman’s notion of cognitive expertise, Anderson’s hierarchy of experts, and Lackey’s concept of acquiring knowledge through others’ testimony. The whole procedure is divided into two tasks. The first establishes whether a given testimony source S is an expert by checking S’s h -index on the Google Scholar search engine. The second is to search Google Scholar for any documented evidence (e.g., reports and textbooks) that proves that there is a consensus among experts that S’s claim is correct.