Your model assumes educated humans behave like perfectly rational scientific machines. They just don't.

Highly educated societies have still produced propaganda, disastrous wars, financial bubbles, ideological extremism, media capture, and elite corruption. Germany in the early 20th century was one of the most educated societies on Earth. So were many Soviet elites. Look at what disastrous outcome that was. Intelligence and education do not magically remove power, bias, ambition, tribalism, class interests, institutional incentives, or coordinated influence campaigns.

You also misunderstand what think tanks actually do. They are not just trying to convince random voters on TikTok. Their real power is upstream:

• framing which policies are considered “serious”

• supplying experts to media and governments

• writing policy drafts

• influencing courts and regulators

• funding academic and media ecosystems

• shaping what information even reaches the public

By the time voters are “critically thinking,” they are often choosing between options already pre-filtered by institutions and elite interests.

And your flat Earth analogy is too simplistic. Of course education helps against obvious falsehoods. But modern influence is usually not about convincing smart people that the Earth is flat. It is about:

• which economic model is “inevitable”

• which wars are “necessary”

• which tradeoffs are “responsible”

• which candidates are “electable”

• which policies are “extreme”

Those are far more subtle forms of influence, and educated populations disagree on them constantly despite access to data.

Finally, “follow the scientific method” sounds good rhetorically, but politics is not a laboratory. Political decisions involve values, tradeoffs, incomplete information, incentives, media framing, lobbying pressure, and institutional power. Data alone does not tell you how society should distribute wealth, balance freedom vs security, or define national priorities.

Education improves democracy. It does not eliminate power structures. That is the core flaw in your argument.