Conspiracy theories: a booming business
Blake Pinto
Unbound
Saybrook University
Apr 2020

The mad are out in force.
Education failure? Intentional misleading (conspiracies to spread dis/misinformation)? Thorough disregard for accountability? ...?
The Us-versus-Them attitude is fairly common; you "push down" someone else, and, at least, spread a bit of suspicion.
While looking into this sort of thing some time ago, I also came across:

The Imminent Demise of Evolution: The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism
G R Morton
Jan 2017

In this case it's easy to spot an ulterior motive (mentioned in the other article), which seems to have resulted in a kind of fraudulent propaganda stretching way back.
I'm reminded of:

post-truth
Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
‘in this era of post-truth politics, it's easy to cherry-pick data and come to whatever conclusion you desire’ — Lexico/Oxford Dictionaries

Surely there's some reasonable middle ground if you will, without the "anything goes" trend?