Zero surprise for me. Capitalist media constantly promotes rich people as honest sources of information... and these are the same people constantly attacking science.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

It's that but not just that.

Notice people paying attention to actors and musicians on social subjects, even though the domain expertise of those people is acting and music respectivelly, not sociology.

(You can even see it here in Lemmy: some actor or other says something on a social subject somebody agrees with and they make a post here about it, under which tons of people write about how they totally agree and it's so good that said person talked about it. If anybody points out "they're an actor, not a domain expert" they're assumed to be of an opposite opinion, even of an opposite political side)

I think there is a broader problem of people's trust on certain subjects being far more highly positivelly correlated with the fame of the advice/opinion giver than with domain expertise.

Your point about rich people does dovetail with this - rich people are often treated as celebrities by the media.

PS: Also there are a bunch of interesting effects around this - for example the more somebody's opinion on something is talked about on the media, even negativelly, the more they are perceived as having a relevant opinion on that subject (the so-called "Halo Effect").