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Emile comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Just thinking... could it be worth doing a website providing interesting parts of settled science for laypeople?
If we take the solid, replicated findings, and remove the ones that laypeople don't care about (because they have no use for them in everyday life)... how much would be left? Which parts of human knowledge would be covered most?
I imagine a website that would first provide a simple explanation, and then a detailed scientific explanation with references.
Why? Simply to give people idea that this is science that is useful and trustworthy -- not the things that are too abstract to understand or use, and not some new hypotheses that will be disproved tomorrow. Science, as a friendly and trustworthy authority. To get some respect for science.
Wikipedia seems close enough to what you're describing ... and improving Wikipedia (plenty of science pages are flagged as "this is hard to understand for non-specialists) seems like the easiest way to move it closer.
The wikipedia contains millions of topics, so the subset of "settled science" is lost among them. Creating a "Settled Science" portal could be an approximation.
As an example of where my idea differs from the wikipedia approach: the wikipedia Science portal displays a link to article about Albert Einstein. Yes, Albert Einstein was an important scientist, but his personal biography is not science. So one difference would be that the "settled science encyclopedia" would not include Einstein or any other scientist (except among the references). Only the knowledge, which could be also used on a different planet with different history and different names and biographies of the scientists.
Also, in wikipedia you have a whole page about a topic. Some parts of the page may be settled science, other parts are not; but both parts are on the same page, in the same encyclopedia. It would be cognitively easier for a reader to know "if it is on SettledScienceEncyclopedia.com", it is settled science.
EDIT: I agree that improving scientific articles on wikipedia, not just making them more correct but also more accessible to wide public, is a worthy goal.