When the choice is between a high-status belief and a true one, those sensitive to questions of status will always choose the former. The Enlightenment era incentivized the practice of good science, and as a result, truth became highly associated with status. The prominence of this development in our cultural foreground obscures the fact that truth-seeking exploded to the extent it did precisely because it became an effective means of increasing one’s status.
How many truth-seekers thought of themselves as seekers of truth, keeping even from themselves, that more than anything they were seeking the public identity of being a truth-seeker. This is beginning to change, though, and many have sniffed in the wind the current onset of a post-Enlightenment era. Scientific truth and cultural status are starting to part ways. As they do, friends, watch carefully the flow of traffic. Which path is chased after? Prestigious institutions will dig in and fight defensive battles, more concerned about the loss of prestige than truth from their ranks. When the ridiculous holds sway and has the chief ability to grant real-world favors, this reality will more than make up for any irrationality in its governing doctrines.
Low truth, high-status beliefs are the wave of the future, and you better believe those angling for cultural and political power are learning to surf them.