This has come up on other threads, but I found this article on the topic particularly interesting:
gurwinder.substack.com/p/why-smart-people-hold-stupid-beliefs
The writer has come up with the concept of Fashionably Irrational Beliefs - FIBs for short (naturally).
This is a great quote, and is a point I sometimes make (though not as well):
"Labyrinthine sophistry like 'sex is a spectrum' prevails among cognitively sophisticated cultural elites, including those who should know better such as biologists, but it’s rarer among the common people, who lack the capacity for mental gymnastics required to accept such elaborate delusions."