I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

A crowd does not manufacture knowledge that none of its members have. Agreement feels like evidence, and a thousand people who have not looked into something can sound far more convincing than one person who has. Numbers of believers tell you what is popular, and popularity has its own causes, most of which have nothing to do with whether the thing is so. This does not mean the crowd is always wrong, only that its size is not the reason to trust it.

Before you adopt a widely held view, find out who actually checked. If nobody in the chain did, hold the view loosely.