Thank you for the response and for sharing my story in a post! Very, very good points. I agree. When one thing is proven inaccurate, like Iraq WMDs, it's easier for some to just assume everything is inaccurate instead of independently verifying facts. (And like you said, not everyone is capable of doing that, for a variety of reasons.)

The deliberate false opposition is a great point too. I found a fascinating book detailing corporate "hacking" tactics, and it included disseminating provably false information that might tempt a competitor to use, and then pointing to that as proof that the competitor's information couldn't be trusted. I'm going to have to dig up that book and share it on Steemit sometime.