The current state of skepticism about scientific studies is reaching a dangerous level. In a short video recorded at a school meeting, a Dr. Daniel Stack makes medical claims for which he does not have adequate education or experience to speak with authority and his viewers wholeheartedly trust his conspiracy theories.

It doesn’t take much scrutiny to see the errors in Stack’s reasoning, nor does it make sense that there is a global conspiracy to upend the world’s economy and kill thousands of people with no end in sight, but plenty of people are choosing to believe it as truth.

In a similar vein of seeking unlikely sources for information, people have begun passing around a recent vaccine-related post from Mike Rowe, host and narrator of cable TV shows and now source of folksy anti-intellectual social media messages. In a recent social media post, Mike posted his view on vaccines and it wasn’t great.

How did the support of vaccines degrade so much? Why did we start to believe conspiracies instead of the consensus from people more educated and intelligent than our neighbor? Consider the source of all this controversy: a study that was fraudulent from the very start but was rarely questioned because it was broadcast in a conspiratorial tone.

We must always strive to be skeptical, but not that we lose our equilibrium and choose incredible opinions over reasonable arguments.