[treis]

IMHO that was a fatal weakness to both the book and movie

Spoiler Alert

The book went further by accusing Arroway of engineering a fraud instead of the "you want us to have faith" bit from the movie. But that made no sense in the context of the story. The radio signal unequivocally came from Vega and the message contained instructions for technology completely unknown on Earth. It made no sense to dispute that contact was made and something happened.

[ISL]

It makes very little sense to argue whether respiratory infections might be limited by wearing face-masks, and yet... here we are.