We made some fundamental mistakes when it comes to the subject of why people believe what they believe. The polite and intellectual answer to that has a lot to say about evidence and reason, replication, publication, review... but that simply doesn't move most people. That isn't how most people live their lives. MOST people operate on networks of trust, because they lack the interest or the capacity to make informed decisions about many things. They don't know how a nuclear power plant works, they don't know anything about monoclonal antibodies, but they know people and places they trust. Their "smart" and "informed" social networks, their doctor, their priest, etc.

Unfortunately those networks of trust are easy to corrupt, not for everyone, but for a large number of people.