It’s good to be sceptical of authority, and of the institution of Science with a capital S. Science is a method to find truth, not a system of experts and publications and exploitative journals. If you do your own experiments, you will find that the Earth is round, as in Behind The Curve. You can also trust the institution of Science, to a degree, bearing in mind the factors that cause bias within it.

Trusting a small group of leaders over the majority of people is a very common tactic in small cults, eg Flat Earthers, Antivaxxers, Radical Islam, Judaism, etc