Instead of jumping straight to competing views I habitually first look at the basis for the view.

So for your example I would be looking at his sources of scientific information, checking that they do in fact say what he thinks they say and that they were published in journals of good standing.

Then I would look around the subject a bit and see if they represent the consensus or if there is debate over them.

I often see people argue competing views while accepting flawed premises. For example a person presenting the view that the measles vaccine was what was responsible for the notable worldwide rise in child respiratory illnesses in the same timeframe. The opposing argument was that correlation doesn't equal causation and there isn't necessarily a link.

But in reality when I took a look there wasn't even any correlation to begin with, as child respiratory infections have decreased in that timeframe. So in this case neither the view or the competing view are meaningful.