The confusion of causation and correlation is often presented as a bug in the human operating system. It’s definitely a mistake here and you are right to point

The confusion of causation and correlation is often presented as a bug in the human operating system. It’s definitely a mistake here and you are right to point it out. But I sometimes wonder if the bug in the human cognitive process is (not mistaking causation vs correlation) but actually that we attribute greater weight to conclusions presented as science, even when they are bad science. We - rightly - trust the scientific process, more than for example testimony or hearsay. Disreputable scientists hack this heuristic to pass bad science as fact.