Your...entire premise relies on the idea that these highly trained, emotionally conservative, relatively objective, professionals are morons lol
You inserted most of those adjectives yourself, without actually knowing how emotional or objective the people in question are. My scenario only required that 1% of the people in such positions are overly emotional, overly subjective, or straight morons. In reality the # is far higher than that.
If you've actually gone to a high-echelon tech school, or worked in a leading scientific workplace, you'll realize that, yes, there are plenty of wackos there. Perhaps fewer than in the population at large, but more than enough to make themselves noticed. Find anyone who goes to an elite university, and ask them, "Which percentage of your classmates are illogical when it comes to conspiracy theories, or believe something that is totally unscientific, or let their biases get in the way of rationality sometimes?" You're gonna get answers much higher than 1%.
Also, if you look at psychological studies of decision-making and how we come to beliefs, you'll find that emotional, subjective ideas which fail to align with objective evidence are common even among intelligent people. And it's very easy for even an intelligent person to begin warping the evidence in order to feed confirmation bias, even if the evidence is manifestly against them. As a species, we are far less consistently rational than we imagine ourselves to be.
Here's just one example. Paul Frampton is one of the world's most brilliant particle physicists. And he was catfished into believing that a literal supermodel, Denise Milani, was in love with him and wanted to marry him, even though they never met, and ended up trafficking cocaine out of Bolivia on "her" behalf.
(CBS) If you thought Manti Te'o was the only one foolish enough to be catfished in an online relationship, then you haven't heard 68-year-old theoretical particle physicist Paul Frampton's story.
Frampton, a 30-year professor of physics at the University of North Carolina, had been chatting online with who he thought was Czech bikini model Denise Milani.
The recently-divorced Frampton had met Milani, an absolutely drop-dead gorgeous exotic model with supposedly natural DDD breasts, on the Internet and the two had fallen in love, the New York times reported.
Or so Frampton thought.
Milani waxed to Frampton about he she was tired of her glamorous life; how she was ready to settle down and have kids. And how Frampton was the only man she wanted to do that with.
According to the newspaper, Milani then arranged for Frampton to meet her in La Paz, Bolivia where she was doing a photo shoot. The plan was for Frampton and Milani to then return to Chapel Hill, North Carolina together and begin their lives together.
But when Frampton arrived in Bolivia, Milani was nowhere to be found. She left him a message saying she had to quickly leave for Brussels for another modeling obligation.
But a message wasn't all Milani left. The exotic super model had reportedly also left behind an empty black suitcase that she claimed had "sentimental value." Frampton was to bring this suitcase with him to Brussels to meet Milani.
Frampton decided he'd had enough travel and would head back to Chapel Hill in hopes Milani would meet him there when she was finished with her photo shoot in Brussels. So, Frampton, armed with Milani's special black suitcase, boarded a plane home.
That's when Frampton was arrested for attempting to smuggle cocaine.
There was no girl. There was no photo shoot. The seemingly empty black suitcase was, in fact, laced with cocaine.
Frampton was sentenced to 4 years and 8 months in jail for drug smuggling.
If you read the full backstory, you'll find that he's at the absolute top of his field, has cowritten papers with numerous Nobel Prize winners, is extraordinarily brilliant, and is also a total fukking moron.
The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble (Published 2013)
A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?
www.nytimes.com
There are extremely intelligent people who deny global warming, who denied Covid, who think that Republicans are brilliant and Democrats are profound idiots, who think that Democrats are brilliant and Republicans are profound idiots, who practice homeopathy, who believe in spiritual mediums, who practice Scientology, and so on and so forth. Not necessarily the majority, but we're not talking about the majority here. The vast majority of people who work on the craft retrivals probably think this whole alien business is a load of shyt. We're only talking about a tiny # of people on the fringe.