Wait, which is it? I shouldn’t believe any extraordinary claim without extraordinary proof? Or just the ones that were made during the cold war? You still haven’t given your definition of “extraordinary” either. And how is a layman supposed to obtain “extraordinary proof”? Is “extraordinary proof” different from “external validation”?

What are you actually trying to say here? Because it sounds like you’re tacitly implying that laymen shouldn’t believe scientists, but that would be asinine, so please correct me if I have that wrong.