The science of opinion ...

"Just not so open that your brains fall out. It’s very messy and hard to clean up."

I disagree.

"Ethan is good with spinning numbers on a calculator or whatnot, but even a dog or horse can be trained to do that."

How big is the horse calculator? It has to be able to withstand lots of force.

“At the scale of a group, repeated local influences among group members may give rise to complex patterns of opinion dynamics such as consensus formation, polarization, or fragmentation [8]–[11]. For example, it has been shown that people sharing similar extreme opinions, such as racial prejudices, tend to strengthen their judgment and confidence after interacting with one another [12]. Similar mechanisms of opinion dynamics can take place in a variety of social contexts.”                                                     AND, OF COURSE; Everyone understands, excepts and completely relies on the naysayers, skeptics and pseudo-scientists to be totally free of any preconceived notions, biases, social/peer pressure, or any other, "mechanisms of opinion dynamics", when posting or publishing their bleats. Spare me!

And furthermore, all of that’s explained by the Backfire Effect, oft described by your friend and humble scribe on these very fora. The concept presented in the “Scientific article” is about as original as Skippy peanut butter.