If I were an Atheist

[Hatshepsut]

The thing is that neither the anemic mass media marketing of scientific data nor the sinister skewing of studies by powerful lobbies are actually science, and these sorts of incorrect ideas are corrected only by science.

Agreed. But institutionalized science won't step in to correct things until someone realizes something is wrong. And applies some pressure. And often, not until an "old guard" of proponents for an older paradigm retire from the university, clearing the way for younger minds to approach the problem with a fresh perspective. Thomas Kuhn's 1962 book The Nature of Scientific Revolutions may be relevant here.

Oracles? You can't be serious surely. Conflating "faith" with "confidence" is what is happening here I expect.

Faith and confidence are both synonyms for trust. There's a difference between oracle and science in terms of methods and outcomes, the latter which usually favor science. But psychologically, our trust in one has the same characteristics as our trust in the other. We feel reassurance, approval, a sense of belonging whenever we have this societal thing in common which we trust. Science replaced oracle over the 18th to 20th centuries as our "roadmap" for how things work, but it serves the same function.