1. A situation becomes political, and all kinds of claims are made by demagogues without evidence in order to score points, based on whatever they would like to be true.
2. There is lots of arguing, and subtle points like “we don’t know enough to know the truth yet but X seems practical/probable” get attacked by all sides or used by the people from 1 to show how much they are being silenced or to generate conspiracy theories.
3. Eventually the reality of the situation becomes mostly clear, and the people who happened to jump to the right conclusion without evidence use it to recruit more followers, and the people who were wrong don’t want to give an inch because it benefits the group who were right for the wrong reasons.
In the end most people get more polarized and there is no clear way to short circuit the process.