Since I am a PhD chemist (UCL, 1981) and others here have equivalent levels of education (which is not to say that we are better than you, or anyone else) the standard of 'proof' is, yes, peer-reviewed Primary Articles and Seconary-literature reviews.
'Everybody knows' doesn't cut it.
Nor assertional, 'It is the (unevidenced) case that.'
As I alluded to above, a body, even, of scientists ('lovers of truth': philosophers) might get it entirely wrong. In which case they have, individually and, hopefully collectively, invert their paradigm. (The essay 'How Rigid Is Your Paradigm?' in the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org might be helpful.)
The best example (and I'm not certain if Thomas Kuhn reviewed this in excellent book 'The Nature of Scientific Revolutions') is that of the Phlogiston Theory of Combustion which was *entirely* inverted by the Oxygen Theory of Combustion.
Incidentally, by the action of an anonymous recommendation I was deeply honoured in the 1980's-90's to have been a reviewer of Sunmitted Manuscripts for The Chemical Society (now The Royal Society of Chemistry).
At that time, Robert Maxwell had purchased two Primary Journal titles, 'Tetraheadron' and 'Tetraheadron Letters' and realised the profit potential of academic publishing.
That co-incided with the change in University Research funding: from Research Council disbursement of State-provided funds to Industrial Funding of 'Research. That had two consequences among a host of others.
First the Industrial Funding was done in order to provide Trained Monkeys for their R&D labs plus *Patents* rather than peer-reviewed academic literature publication.
This meant that The Universities became Capitalist Monversities and For-profit publication of utterly-worthless 'Medical Science', 'Materials Science', 'Computational Science (á la the murderer at the South-Kensington bastion of pride and bullying, the 'Imperial' College of Capitalism)' meant that the frenetic McDonalsisation of University 'Research' means that I would *no longer* recommend any young person go to a 'University' in the global north-west.
Woe!
Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this exploration of the 'asympomatic speader' hypothesis.
Regardless of its outcome, the fact that the CDC funded the 'research' that is reported in the one 'scientific' Primary Journal paper so far cited makes my point: the capitalist monoversities cannot *in any sense* be trusted.
Life-long Scholarship, guaranteed Tenure, resulting in contrary voices and 'as led' independent, properly-funded investigations are now dead.
Furthermore, Collegiality has been destroyed: not only because of the 'payment by acceptable results' funding neck-lock but, because the Monoversity Undergraduate popultation has been inflated from 5% of the age cohort in my day (1969-1972, University of Bristol, Chemistry BSc II:1) to now (50% or so of the age cohort: in order to:
a. Disguise Youth Unemployment, and,
b. To provide Tuition Fee Income to the Monoversities, so that,
c. The Graduating Classes take on pre-QE Annual Increase in the Interest-bearing Debt 'Money Supply', then,
d. The tenured staff become, in large part for the Undergraduates, distanced stage-performers. While Post-graduate ongoing students become the Undergraduates' tutorial teachers (this, admittedly, was already my experience at Bristol 1969-72).
Thus I have long-described this era, à la Hobsbawm, 'The Age of Stupidity'.
Woe!
