A Ph.D. will immediately get out a hammer and beat on it to see if any rotten pieces fly off
I think you've missed off something important from your analysis: group-think. That is to say, the Ph.D. is something of a course of indoctrination into a paradigm, moderated by fellow believers. It isn't for nothing they say that science progresses one funeral at a time.
The article is talking about those who completely deny all facts
Yet it starts by talking about Senator Infhoe, who "believes" that doubling CO2 will cause an increase of around ~1C, but that all the other computer model predictions are bollocks. So how is Infhoe an idiot when an eminent scientist like Richard Lindzen and many others hold the same view? The article should be turned around because it's clearly about activist scientists using science to promote a political agenda and how the public are getting wise to this. In reality, scientists themselves are destroying public trust in science by "marketing" their work for personal or professional gain.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.