If the material from some prominent pop-science book were rearranged into something written in a similar style but in fact completely wrong and nonsensical and signed by an equally high-status author, how many readers of these books would realize that something's wrong?

By checking multiple sources, like I always do.

This reply seems to make more sense if I assume that lukeprog cut and pasted the 'would' over the 'many' while reading. I suspect the answer to the actual question to be along the lines of "Probably relatively few, but lukeprog would be among them, he always checks multiple sources!".