RE: Understanding Cognition: The Moon Hoax Bias
I think much of the debate around issues like these is focused around a disconnect of arguments. It seems like the "conspiracists" are constantly demanding evidences while repeated providing evidences on their own end as if they have not been debunked by further evidence, and the "mainstreamists" are generally confused that pointing out such a staggering body of evidence seems to make no headway.
The key missing part I think, as some of the other commenters have hinted at, is this idea of the trustworthiness of the "official narrative". The conspiracist argument, when pushed, tends to converge here: that all evidences provided from the well known sources: scientific literature, school, government agencies, "mainstream" media - are part of this "official narrative". If you consider all of these as untrustworthy, then it is no wonder that ideas like flat earth and moon landing hoax theories become viable.
So I think the discourse should be more centered around this, the actual point of contention. There needs to be more talk about this "official narrative" - first of which, I think, is to note that the "official narrative" is not one thing but multiple different sources that can each be independently analysed for reliability. We must endeavor to answer "why can I trust contemporary scientific literature" first, or all the investigations and evidences provided by the scientific community would count for naught.
Exactly, it's like when people say science say or scientist assert as if they are all one body of people pulling in the same direction, when in fact quite the opposite is true.
Cg