"Science" is often thrown around to justify things it shouldn't.

Sociology hasn't had as much success as "hard" sciences so we should distinguish between the two. (for example with the controversy around major psychology experiments being unreplicable etc)

I think you're right. There are a lot of cranks out there. But history suggests a lot of lone voices who got ruthlessly suppressed while actually being right.

The important bit - to me, at least - is we don't run a witch hunt against the lone voices. If they are right, they should be heard out - if they are wrong, they can ignored. And, if dangerous, they can be no-platformed, etc.

I have some pretty ironclad faith in the scientific method, but far less so in the scientific establishment. Don't get me wrong, I don't think scientists are doing a bad job and don't think I could do any better as an individual if I were a scientist. But most people's understanding of "science" goes through tons of filters that hurt its quality: statistical illiteracy among scientists, messed-up incentives in the publishing process, political pressure within research, skew in what the media is incentivized to cover, the obscene amount of dishonesty and incompetence in science reporting, etc etc.

I've yet to meet someone with such faith in science whose understanding of what "science" is goes beyond pop-science articles and things that all of their friends "know" are scientific fact.

Yes, but what happens when the voice of science is underrepresented?

Now read the grandparent comment again.

Perhaps it's just that the people who actually have the useful-science-shit to do aren't in stupid discussion threads like this one? ;)

In the history of science we are apt to celebrate singular voices that overturn conventional wisdom. What we don't see is the large number of cranks with TimeCube theories who imagine themselves to be geniuses.

The history of science has a kind of survivorship bias toward good ideas, and most people who think they're the next Galileo are almost definitely wrong.