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Are you suggesting HBD skepticism would be less prevalent if people understood basic sciences more? I don't think that's the case. HBD skepticism has more to do with social factors than people honestly considering the evidence and coming to the wrong conclusions. The same thing is true for outdoor mask mandates, the reasoning driven by politics and fear (and to be fair, your water-coloring analogy doesn't apply to droplets, only airborne transmission, presumably an outdoor mask would prevent sneezing on others)
This plays into Caplan's argument, in which he admits his economic students go on to support minimum wage hikes, rent control, etc. Presumably these students have intuitive understanding of supply and demand.
All that said, I do agree with your premise. My case against Caplan is as follows: Education is where we go to train the models in our heads. We may forget the inputs, but the models remain. I may not remember all the dates and numbers from the world wars, but learning about those events has improved my models of reality and social structures. That sounds like intuition to me.
Is it inaccurate to suggest that people are more likely to default to "trusting the experts" on topics which they have only minor understanding of? That is, if somebody learns basic science and only partially understands it, trusting the authority of their teachers and memorizing passwords, then when an "Expert" comes along and contradicts that with "updated science" they will discard their previous vague knowledge and latch onto the new password. It's just trading one expert (the school teacher) for a new one with higher status. But if someone has a strong understanding of the science and the underlying concepts, and is confident in the accuracy of their knowledge because it's tied into a holistic framework, then they will be less likely to update in the face of new evidence, as a change in the password has to contend with how it changes the whole framework.
People tend to be much more stubborn about ideas that they know a lot about, and trust other people in things they don't know much about. And this is rational, because your previous knowledge of ideas you don't know much about are more likely to be wrong. So if people had a stronger understanding of science, they would be less likely to blindly believe what other people say without evidence strong enough to overcome their prior understanding. And while there are plenty of counterexamples, I expect it would still have a large effect on the margins.
I think that does make sense, at least in a vacuum, but going to college will probably also make you more likely to "trust the experts" on a number of topics, including OP's examples of rejecting HBD and supporting outdoor masks
But going to college =/= more educated
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