But reports like this are exactly the kind of thing that gets picked up and paraded around by the media who don't have the faintest comprehension of the science or methodology behind the findings. Which makes it exceedingly difficult for the reader to figure out whether the new information is itself fraudulent/mistaken/incomplete, or was it the old information that was?

I've done enough tests and measurements in my life to know that questions like:

What assumptions were made?
What variables were controlled?
What variables were not controlled?
How was the data analyzed? What data was omitted and why?
How were the samples chosen?
How were the measurements performed? With what instruments? Were they direct measurements? Deduced measurements? Average measurements?

And probably a dozen more similar questions I can't think of off the top of my head. But all those types of questions can and will have a HUGE effect on the outcome of your research. Yet none of those get covered in reported findings. You would have to go back to the published research itself, and even then it would be tricky to find those answers without being an expert in that particular field.

I'm not saying don't trust anything. And I'm certainly not advocating getting your scientific knowledge from religious texts. I'm just saying don't trust everything.