The problem is that the likeliness of the uninformed person to believe something they've heard has depressingly little to do with how likely that thing is to be

The problem is that the likeliness of the uninformed person to believe something they've heard has depressingly little to do with how likely that thing is to be true. A critical examination of the facts is something humans will avoid until it is absolutely unavoidable; we have an array of other heuristics we'll gladly jump to over expending costly mental effort evaluating something for truth.