It's actually reminiscent of the Spanish inquisition. Far be it from clergy to actually do violence, they're men of god! They just point out the heretics and then the Spanish crown burns them alive.
Everybody has a scapegoat.
Plus the level of mutilation I've seen in the game of telephone from published paper to tabloid to blog is at times astounding.
You can start with "certain entangled properties observed" and end with "Scientists say universe is created by imagination"
or "observed magnitude drop curvature consistent with atmosphere in planetary transit survey" and end with "alien cities discovered, scientists say"
There are only three main possibilities:
1.) You heard it from a static source you can't debate, all you can do is follow the citation, if you don't understand the article you just have to use fuzzy logic and assume it's true or false as your worldview biases you.
2.) You heard it from someone who claims to understand the science, in which case you can debate them to the point where you are convinced they do in fact know more than you; at which point you can choose to learn more or trust them.
3.) You heard it from someone who doesn't know what the hell they're talking about but expects you to just believe them because what THEY consider an authoritative source made the assertion.
I think the key is you need to be basically literate in science and we need to actually teach our kids so they are. Then you need to ignore anyone who won't engage in a scientific debate (3). Just ignore them. Tell them "thank you for informing me of this source, but if you can't make the arguments the scientists make you shouldn't be trying to convince others. That is the role of people who think they understand the arguments involved."
