Ask questions that a 5th grader could answer. The level does not hove too be that high for it to be effective.

Or... just ask science questions: "Is planet Earth flat?".

That just tests the ability to stick to consensus - what happens when you get the equivalent of "does the Sun orbit the Earth" in a society before Copernicus and Galileo? You also move away entirely from the original point of the questions - someone with scientific knowledge doesn't necessarily know anything about society and politics. They're separate worlds.

In a society before Copernicus and Galileo that question would have been cutting edge science. So just stick to well understood things.

Even that is apparently fraught because a few people (though no sects I'm aware of) profess belief in a flat Earth for religious reasons. For example, Biblical literalists interpreting Job 38 as implying a flat Earth ("Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? [...] Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof").

That's exactly the point: exclude those people. The idea is not to have everybody pass the test.