The problem with people who “do their own research” is that most of them aren’t even capable of reading a summary of a scientific paper and understanding it, much less reading the paper itself and making sense of it.

That’s not the only hindrance, of course, but it is a major one.

To “do your own research” in most fields you need about a 140 IQ minimum. The average IQ in the US is 100 and only 0.38% of the population has a 140 or above IQ.

So…good luck with that.