One useful rule of thumb in deciding whether to trust experts is to see what happens if you learn a bit and start talking to them about evidence.

If it's all "I have 20 years of experience in this field", you should get very worried, especially if the more you dig the more likely you are to get this kind of answer (assuming that you're actually asking thoughtful questions and being responsive to whatever evidence is offered--simply noting that people try whatever they need to to get rid of you when you're acting like an idiot is completely uninformative).

If it very quickly gets to "No, Marsh & Chan (1997) looked at that, and actually, not only is that not a concern, but..." or "That's a really interesting question! It's tempting to use a scalar term to account for assortive mating, but Ogden et al. 2022 looked into a diversity of network models and...", then you're probably good. If the first expert doesn't, but you get one soon who does, probably good.

The reason is that science is only effective when it is constrained by evidence. Experts who constantly immerse themselves in evidence and are thinking about what it means are likely to have objective reasons for what they think, and are likely to convey their thoughts to others.

On the other hand, if what experts know very well is some sort of social convention, then they'll need to fall back on it when (respectfully) challenged.

It's not a perfect way to judge but it is, as I said, a useful rule of thumb.