60% of the Time It Works Everytime

I has come to my attention that 87% of people believe statistics that are 35% of the time wrong.  I honestly have no idea about the actual percentages on the case, but it's not hard to believe this without questioning it.  The reason I am speaking of this is because of a discussion I had with a friend yesterday.  He was telling me about what people hear whenever they hear a stat.  Most often, people believe them without any question to the validity of the statement.  I began asking myself why, and I came up with two answer, though there are probably millions.  The first thing I thought of was obviously laziness.  If one is given a stat that they don't already know, chances are that they don't care enough to do any actual research on the subject, so they are content with the knowledge bestowed upon them by their conversee.  I mean even if you knew it was wrong, if you didn't care about it, would you care to correct them?  The other explanation I found was the white coat thesis.  People tend to believe any and everything they hear from someone with a white coat, doctor, scientist, etc.  Why try to validate information that is coming from someone that you assume is much brighter than you?