Very good points. My own bias is to believe the claims of the scientific community and is thoroughly revealed in my language. Perhaps I'm the one being bilked.
Thanks. I think the discussion gets a little tricky because the groups "scientific facts" and "anti-intellectuals" are pretty broad categories.
I'm guessing that in a group of 1000 people that you would call "anti-intellectuals", some portion of them really do deserve that label.
Similarly, in the group of propositions you'd call "scientific 'facts'", some really are beyond reasonable dispute (i.e., Newton's laws in everyday-life settings). But that there are some other propositions which the academic community and their mouthpieces (New York Times, etc.) hold with unjustified confidence.
