I believe we have had a very rapid progression of how science is being treated by the layman from the Aristotelian "Logos" more towards the direction of "Ethos": Science is authority and is to be trusted, rather than speculated on and second guessed.

"Believe the science" "Trust the science" And the most ridiculous of all: "The science is settled"

The sequences use terms like "intelligence", "smarter", and "cognition", purely to place themselves in what they conceive to be the scientific genre of philosophy.