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Brian_Tomasik comments on Common sense as a prior - LessWrong
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1.3 billion Muslims -- including many national leaders, scientists, and other impressive people throughout the Islamic world -- believe that Mohammad was an authority on whether Allah exists.
Of course, there are plenty of others who do not, so I'm not suggesting we conclude it's probable that he was, but it seems like something we couldn't rule out, either.
Religion is a set of memes, not in the Internet sense of "catchy saying' but in the slightly older sense that it has characteristics which lead to it spreading. I suggest modifying the original proposal: in deciding who is trustworthy to many people, you should take into account that beliefs which are good at spreading for reasons unrelated to their truth value can skew the "many people" part.
Given what we know about how religions spread, religious beliefs should be excluded on these grounds alone. If scientists who expressed a particular belief about science were killed, that would apply to scientists too (the fact that most trusted scientists in Stalinist Russia believed in Lysenkoism, since the others were dead or silenced, would not be a reason for you to do so).
So is culture. Are you ready to demand culture-neutrality?
Would that apply also to scientists who were prevented from getting grants and being published? How do you know, without hindsight, which of the two warring scientific factions consists of cranks and crooks, and which one does not?
It is possible for a culture to at least not be inimical to truth. But to the extent that a religion is not inimical to truth, it has ceased to be a religion.
If the main reason why scientists don't express a belief is that if they do they would be arbitrarily denied grants and publication, then it would apply. However, in the modern Western world, almost every example* where someone made this claim has turned out to be a crank whose lack of publication was for very good reasons. As such, my default assumption will be that this has not occurred unless I have a specific reason to believe that it has.