I especially agree with your first couple of paragraphs, which is that dogma has come to replace science in so much of popular culture. It's like the term "Science" has been unknowingly redefined as a sort of religion by so many people, and "scientists" are the new shamans and fortune tellers. In the US, I think this has become a major social problem in the last few decades. Sometimes I feel like we're living through the prelude to that Star Trek episode where a centuries-old computer has taken on the role of a god to generations of people in a society that has forgotten how the machine works.