Last year I was rang by a bloke crying his eyes out, he said he'd heard our department could arrange somebody to witness a will so I said I could send somebody.
He said his partner was in ICU dying, he'd still got capacity but not for long, he then went on to say he was into conspiracy theories and didn't believe covid existed.
The will was witnessed, he died shortly after and his partner was now alone because of the stuff he watched on You Tube.
These sorts of "woo" beliefs seem to be pervasive in all sorts of fields, unfortunately; the true believers get easily trapped in the belief system and the skeptic is seen as just being ignorant, you've just got to be "open-minded" is often the go to response.
I guess some of it is driven by obvious motivations for people to *want* to believe in these "woo" beliefs.
In the case of covid people were fed up, government messaging didn't help and "just the flu" + some idea that there was a secret agenda to control "sheeple" becomes attractive, they can ignore the rules as they're not the "sheeple", they've value "natural immunity" and won't take the "experimental" vaccine.
In medicine in general you'll have hippie types who don't trust big Pharma but who'll find homeopathic "cures" attractive, you've got Chiropractors who will step in to treat your non-specific back pain that your GP can't really do anything for or clinics in Mexico who will promise to cure your cancer when the NHS has told you it's incurable.
Astrology seems to be attractive to some, especially women, they can blame the stars for behaviour, incompatibility in a relationship or just some bad luck or outcome they didn't like.
In trading there is "technical analysis", which in the best cases is stats made easy and in the worst cases is all sorts of woo beliefs about "Elliot waves", "fib retracements" etc.. It's attractive as it relies on being simple/easy to pick up and often subjective (there isn't necessarily a wrong answer) no STEM degree required. Brokers/bucket shops love it as it gives people a framework to start trading. In the 90s in the US there was a stockmarket daytrader boom, everyone was a trading genius, these days there has been a crypto boom and the same stuff is being promoted.
And in the legal field there is this "freeman of the land" stuff, it's also attractive, you've racked u some fines or you've fallen behind on your mortgage but ackhually, the mortgage is a "legal fiction" and the banks just print money and the "person" on the mortgage doesn't exist and so
something something just stop paying it and cite maritime law in court and everything will be totally fine, you totally won't get evicted and lose your house...