Realism? One of the core jobs of science is understanding the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. That does not mean bitterness but mistrust is absolutely essential. The very fact that people use terms like 'trust' and 'believe' when it comes to science questions shows how deep this problem goes.
Btw, when it comes to how much science is influenced by social pressures and politics I can say from personal experience it's hard to know how serious the problem is until you see it yourself from the inside.
You need to believe and trust in science, you cannot verify everything. You have to use a model for a part of your experiment, or a machine, you'd better trust that. You can't spend more time checking everything again from first principles...
Guess I'm a heretic then, because I do not believe.
With the argument it's to complicated to check one could justify believing in anything. Shouldn't people rather admit they don't actually know things in such cases? Someone who doesn't understand and only follows majority opinion doesn't add anything to the conversation, in fact it can be dangerous is they fall for charlatans.
Btw, when it comes to how much science is influenced by social pressures and politics I can say from personal experience it's hard to know how serious the problem is until you see it yourself from the inside.