The short version When encountering scientific claims - or really any objective claim - it can be difficult to know what to believe, especially when there seems to be conflicting stories. In the world of COVID-19 shutdowns and stay-at-home orders, it can be hard to parse through the deluge of information and figure out what’s going on. The following set of questions can serve as a sort of “smell test” to get an initial sense of the validity of the claims at hand.