There really is a lot of nonsense published at high levels in earth science, and a lot of nonsense said by medical doctors. The New York Times magazine had a front page article a couple years ago stating that doctor only know half of their field and are wrong about the other half, but they don't know which half. I have a personal experience or 2 with this: a chiropractor cured my daughter of scoliosis (from 22 deg to 7 deg in 1 year) while the back specialists, who did nothing, said that chiropractors could not do this..essentially that they were quacks.
I feel that Americans, including American scientists, are not well trained in evaluating information. I've thought that if I was a professor I might tell the class that I was going to make up nonsense got 10% of what I said and then people would have to "call" me on that. In a form of humor, I raised my daughter that way ("hey...look, Mickey Mouse" and then pretend to steal her food). She is very, very hard to fool.
Chris