A blatant lie! But then... do we know for a fact the earth is round?
If the most adamant flatearther was taken to space, would they come back and still believe the earth was flat?
At some point, part of the lie has to be to put our trust in others who we predict know better than ourselves. I drive my car almost daily, but I am not a mechanic and when I push the breaks, I trust the car will stop, even though I had nothing to do with their development, creation, or service. Trust in science is similar, but blind trust in science is dangerous. The incentives to lie are very high, so checks and balances are needed.
To do this we must shed the veil in science. Revealing the truth; There's no diference between saying "It must be done because the bible says so" to "This is true because this book says so". To create an open mind, willing to investigate anything, we must shed the veil of shame, of tribalism, of the new cultural belief at power, science of course. I am not saying just free denialism, but with an ultimate purpose.
Sometimes, human knowledge faces a bottleneck. Usually when it must shed old believes to breaktrhough, this is when Albert Einstein made great discoveries, when he defied the laws of the absolute and found relatives in them all. Then quantum physics and so on, in every stage of human knowledge.