Here's the thing about science.
Most people can't be bothered to remember the very basics of it, and I don't mean the factual underpinnings – I mean the philosophy, the process, the way of thinking that is essentially scientific. Instead, they default to an authoritarian acceptance; any claim must be true, it's only arguments against that claim that need to provide support. They believe this even if two weeks later the exact opposite claim is made by someone else whom they would have required actual support from to counter the previous claim!
I can't blame this on education. The information is there. The history is there. I can't blame this on the media, or even social media. This is the result enculturation to prioritize feelings, particularly immediate feelings, over reason. To respond to emotion with sympathy before critical facility kicks in.
This is why "a study says" is the worst possible thing for one of these people to run into. A study says it? It must be true! Even though, scientifically, we know that any study can be false, and that any study has a pretty good chance of being faults, and that truth is discovered by multiple studies, reproduced in multiple places, by multiple groups of scientists – and anything less is not truth, it's just lower on the spectrum than pure lie.
Try to communicate that to the True Believers and you're going to get blank, glassy stares, and the persistent belief that you are probably some sort of hideous agent of evil sent to corrupt their minds with doubt.
I cannot help having trouble shaking the idea that most people want a God and they don't know how to function in the absence of one. So instead of doing the work to figure out how the world really works, or doing the work to put together a concept of God that actually functions in the context of the scientific philosophy (hint: that's not going to happen, but the effort might educate them in something), they began to worship the academic outputs of the process without understanding or having the tools to interpret those outputs.
Dr. Oz? He's a doctor! Whatever he says about medicine must be true. Dr. Phil? He's a doctor! Oprah loves them! Whatever he says about minds must be true. Climate change? Settled science! Whatever our chosen Messiah of the moment says about climate change must be true.
It is a means of belief which is all about science but is not penetrated by science.
My personal preference for solving the problem would be to throw people off of roofs until a few learn to fly, and then sell them to the highest bidder. Some may have called that a little excessive.
Short of that, the only thing I can think of is to keep plodding onward, keep trying to get a deeper understanding of how science works in front of people, show them that it works, show them why it works, show them that the continuous chain of it working has led to lives which are neither nasty, brutish nor short compared to our forbearers.
It will be difficult. People love a crisis. People love a panic. People of both of those things went secretly, in their hearts, the they know they're not real – the crisis will never come to a crisis; the panic will never come to a panic, and freed of the responsibility of the results, those that wish to indulge can be as histrionic as they like.
And that brings us right back to the top where the modern media enterprises start.
@lextenebris Wow, thanks a lot for this contribution to the topic! I have some comments:
I agree completely that the ability to being reproducible is what makes a study or finding solid and reliable, however I wouldn't go as far as to say that anything that hasn't been replicated many times is slightly better than a lie. It might well be true but lacks robustness and scrutiny in order to be taken as a generally applicable principle (or maybe this is what you meant?).
This is what I find most difficult dealing with: when people are shutting you down a priori because they decided that they don't trust anything that comes from science, then trying to reason and explain the evidence at hand becomes an impossible task.
Personally I don't know what the best way to deal with this recalcitrant attitude could be. Maybe your approach (which requires a lot of patience) could help to plant some seeds of real knowledge, although in my experience people like this would to anything to avoid admitting they might be wrong even if they start having doubts.
If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck – you are probably not best served by making decisions as if it were a chicken.
Something hasn't been replicated many times, it is structurally indistinguishable from a lie. It might be true, just as any live might be true, but without verifiability and someone taking the steps to verify it, a clever and wise person should never use that information for judgment.
This is a much higher bar than "generally applicable principle." It is indistinguishable from a lie. This is far more insidious if it happens to be something that you want to believe.
That's the trap that a lot of these people fall into.
I have simply taken to accepting that people who don't trust anything that comes from science have tacitly agreed that I can take from them anything that comes from science. If it doesn't exist, or it's an agency of evil, or it's an invalid way to make decisions, then clearly I'm protecting them and they should support me in protecting them – by taking their computers, their cell phones, their health, their primary, secondary, and tertiary means of socialization, the ability to move further than a swift jog…
You know, things. Derived from science. I'm helping!
Well, there is a real and true alternative.
We could kill all of them.
It's not like they would have particularly good weapons. Comparatively. Once you toss scientific thought, your weapons development strategy goes right out the window. I'm pretty sure we could take them.
That is a lot of work, however, so I am generally disinclined to bother. In the long run, their belief system is effectively self-defeating because it demands that they take inefficient options at every turn. So ultimately, science wins. In the short term, we just have to learn how to mock them openly and without hesitation, twisting the knife whenever possible. If nothing we say can really make a difference, enjoy the performance art.