I call this sort of thing “highbrow” misinformation not just because of the social class and self-regard of those who believe it, but also because of the relatively sophisticated way that it is propagated. Often one will find the accurate claim buried deep in the text, but framed in a way that leads most readers to misinterpret it.
I’m sympathetic! Going and actually reading carefully the research that has produced a given headline is tiresome and no one has time to validate every single thing they read. But it’s important that someone does this, and that they’re heard just as loudly as the people spreading falsehoods, even if (especially if) politically inconvenient.
I had a professor in graduate school who would always make strong claims that “no one really reads research, even the people citing it.” It initially came off as cranky to me, but I saw time and again where he just sat down, read carefully what was written, and then checked to see if the conclusions followed or not. It was shocking how often they didn’t.