In my experience

Whenever you hear a person saying, “in my experience, […] is better/worse” too often, stay alert. Don’t immediately push back their ideas, but try to increase your bullshit filter for a second. It seems that people tend to express their personal opinions, which aren’t grounded in any data, with this handy phrase. And we should give them credit for that — it does work very well. As a listener, you can’t prove that the experience didn’t happen, which makes the proposed idea bulletproof against any arguments.

Seeking the truth, you can still go into direct confrontation and ask for details about the occasion when they had the experience. What’s the backstory and outcome? That’s the ideal path, which should be fostered in healthy teams. Though, you will notice, that some get too defensive and don’t reveal their cards. I translate this defensiveness as an indicator that the experience didn’t happen. The person most likely came up with the opinion a minute ago and now trying to convince everyone that it’s based on a real story.

Should you continue listening to them, though? I think so. Such opinions are still based on some experience. It’s a shame that they couldn’t articulate it properly and decided to take the easy path by lying about an event in the past, but that doesn’t necessarily make them wrong. Let them express their gut feeling — just be more cautious with it.