I would expect the students developed this reaction due to being bullied by people who bluffed that they had a more advanced theory when really they were just driven by confirmation bias. Solving the root cause would involve finding the bullies and stopping them somehow. Perhaps by teaching the students how to tell whether a theory is just a bluff, though likely there’s an adversarial situation where the bullies make friends with authorities and hide against whichever detection methods are used, so one needs to handle this in a careful way.
I would expect the students developed this reaction due to being bullied by people who bluffed that they had a more advanced theory when really they were just driven by confirmation bias. Solving the root cause would involve finding the bullies and stopping them somehow. Perhaps by teaching the students how to tell whether a theory is just a bluff, though likely there’s an adversarial situation where the bullies make friends with authorities and hide against whichever detection methods are used, so one needs to handle this in a careful way.