Since I brought up children somewhere recently, I’m reminded of the time I tried to teach “See ya later alligator, in a while crocodile” to a 4 year old. She knew it was funny, but when I asked her to say it, she say, “bye, bye alligator” and “see you crocodile. Joke”. She could see a pattern, but didn’t understand the structure or rules of it.
This is very similar to what I see people doing today. They know about premises and logic, but never bothered working through enough logic problems to get the hang of it. They can’t spot a flawed premise or don’t see when the premises do not infer a conclusion. That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but then lots of those people got together and created think tanks that pump out papers that look like science, but aren’t. As long as they claim they did some work to arrive at their conclusions, there is no way of knowing if they are being honest about that, or if they are intentionally lying and giving the appearance of logic and reasoning.
Note, I didn’t say their papers can’t be shown to be false. You just need a little expertise in the field and the ability to compare methodologies. Often it’s a lot easier. You can spot the bad paper because the authors will call you names for questioning their work. But the world has gone downhill since this all started and name calling is now considered an art.