> I think it's a clever twist of the word "authority"
There is overwhelming evidence that established science is correct, and the scientists are using objectively powerful techniques to establish truth.
However, the mechanisms society at large uses to test and assimilate that knowledge are exactly the same as those used for religious authority. The major difference is that rituals invoking science tend to correlate much more closely with getting the outcome we expect than rituals invoking the gods.
Picking on doctors as representatives of the scientific establishment, there isn't much difference from an average person's perspective going to a doctor or a faith healer. Person has a problem, they go to an authority figure, things they don't understand happen, and then hopefully they get a good outcome - no guarantee though. From the perspective of the patient's decision making process, there is no difference.
What is different is the advice from the social network will (hopefully) be 'don't see the faith healer; see the doctor'. That is the only difference in practice between the two decisions.
Monitoring and criticising how the underlying mechanisms work is a perfectly reasonable line of inquiry and place to dissent. There are interesting ethical questions here about who needs to do what to fulfill their ethical requirements between what the patient's responsibilities are given their limited understanding, the social network's responsibility given their third-party status and the authority figure's role in how to represent themselves.