If you think you don't trust scientists, you're mistaken. You trust scientists in a million different ways every time you step on a plane, or for that matter turn on your tap or open a can of beans. The fact that you're unaware of this doesn't mean it's not so.
Reading about the 0.1s measurement problems of the 19th c, I’m no longer sure indexical and objective were ever really separated. Quite possibly, people just got very clever about calculating around the coupling. Feynman’s QED renormalization is actually a good example.