There's a lot of blame to go around here that doesn't only belong in the New Age alternative medicine cult. (Crystals and such are clearly fraudulent)

Last I checked colloidal silver was being sold by a christian evangelist named Jim Bakker. Then there's chiropractors. Then there was the anti-vaxxers. Then the "vitamins will cure anything under the sun." Then there was things like "all-herbal fen phen" and other herbal products. Then there's that famous goop company led by a has been actress which has some questionable products, but sold to housewives. Oh and the entire premise of homeopathic medicine is a fraud.

And then FDA approved drugs like fen phen (Wyeth) which should not have made it to market some how did, and caused heart valve problems.

Hell, when you think about it, what the fuck exactly is holy water which is used by the Catholic church?

If you can dupe people into the premise that "Magical Things are Real", then it becomes easy to take their money away from them. And right now, it doesn't seem too hard to do these days.

Agreed it's not exclusive to New Age beliefs, though my point wasn't exactly about the specific delusions ("I can cure anything with this diluted tincture of petals") but about the completely irrational standards of proof.

They cannot find a way to trust the opinion of professionals ("they are lying", "they pay them to say so", "the evidence is faked", "they want to control us", "this has toxic stuff they won't tell you about") but if the nice woman at the grocery store tells them her niece went to a healer who has a "holistic" method of curing migrane/the flu/covid/cancer then suddenly it's "it must work, don't be narrow minded!".

I would understand if they were always mistrustful of everything: the government, big pharma, the woman at the grocery store, anecdotes from coworkers. But no, their mistrust is weirdly selective.