It is only partially
who things come from that affects how I would evaluate it. It also depends on how important the issue is to me.
No one has time to fact-check ever single statement they see or hear. You pick and choose. An incomplete list of things to consider is:
1) Does it make any difference to me or the world.
2) Does it fit with other things I am very sure of.
There are many good reasons to accept thermodynamics so if you tell me you have a perpetual motion machine you're going to have to work very hard to convince me even if you are a card-carrying professor of physics that I know a lot about.
If someone pushes a gold standard I'd have to see a lot of detail since I know somethings that make that difficult.
If someone tells me there is a whiz bang new battery tech coming to make EVs way cheaper and longer range. I won't bother checking it out. From past experience I'll wait until I can buy it. Until then it makes zero difference to me.
If someone claims "I'm not a crook" I'll weigh that statement against all their past behavior. You can be fooled by this. When I was told about the Delhi Lama's behavior with a boy my first instinct was to believe it was fake news but I did a little googling around and was disappointed to find out that it appears (held tentatively) to be true.
3) How many sources are there for and against the claim. I want to see reasoned logical discussions about it. This part will, of course, include the evidence for and against the assertion.
For a very large number of assertions made to me by individuals or "news" sources I just let them slide because they don't matter or are so obviously wrong they can be discarded without effort.
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