Arguably, this has been true for many years ("confidence" and "quick answers" belong on this list too) -- false perceptions that are genetically programmed in us to some degree, i.e., obsessing for such things once had survival 100,000 years ago.

I think it's worse now, because the overwhelming firehose flood of information we receive today via digital media etc so greatly reduces the time we can spend digesting any one piece of information degrades our ability to evaluate its quality, so we treat all information equally (i.e., are blind to its quality or trashiness) and can only remember the loudest most intrusive information, and because that's all we remember, we act on that, since it's the only information we effectively have.

Something like that, anyway. Thanks for spotlighting this!