It would be nice if that was true. But school and university has taught people to first and foremost be obedient.
That means a large majority of people doesn't care about the truth at all, only what the relevant authorities are saying.
Many of those authorities have learnt that deciding what is true based on reality is good and all, but you live longer and better by making friends and not disagreeing with them.
This is such a weird perspective because the attitude I associate with people who go through the university system on the academic path is not obedience at all, but ruthless self advancement. Like literally where are all these obedient people you are talking about?
I would characterize the problem with science as being a failure to increase the available resources commensurate with the population of people capable of doing science. In this situation, the competition becomes sufficiently fierce that it is statistically better to lie, cheat or knee-cap your competitors in some other way than it is to actually do good science, which is unreliable. What you see as fealty to scientific authority is actually just a system which has become totally dominated by resource competition to the exclusion of its actual purpose.
> school and university has taught people to first and foremost be obedient.
That's not inevitable. I count myself lucky that it didn't happen to me.
Unfortunately I don't know how to improve schools to the level of those I attended over half a century ago. And I lack the get up and go to make it happen anyway.
Many of those authorities have learnt that deciding what is true based on reality is good and all, but you live longer and better by making friends and not disagreeing with them.
This is a societal failing.