[indubitable]

In general intuition is a tool that can be used to help uncover things, but should not be used as a basis for a view by itself. You might be inclined to call the following the most "obvious, tepid, noncontroversial statement" "It's self evident that you shouldn't expose people with bacterial infections to something that comes from the blue green mold that emerges on rot." Of course as you might know, I actually just described penicillin. Our tendency to think our knee jerk intuition is something that can stand alongside data is undoubtedly a big part of what caused it to take years for penicillin to come to be accepted, even after the results were published and shared.

[wfo]

Oh I certainly agree. And in general, beware anyone who uses the phrase 'common sense' - it turns out it is often not so common, not so sensical, or both.

But the notion that media influences culture (for which there is overwhelming evidence not only scientific but in the form of every for-profit organization that has a marketing division, and which is even a truism - media IS culture) being stated in the New York Times in 2018 is like taking a paragraph in a Nature article to explain yes, the moon exists.