As the son of an engineer who grew up in a city of rocket scientists, I think the most believable aspect of "The Three-Body Problem" is that a bunch of scientists would see their experiments yield highly unexplainable results and, instead of thinking "maybe I screwed up the tests" or "I'm really bad at this," they just conclude "welp I guess physics doesn't exist" and kill themselves. That's the self-confidence of a true engineer if I ever saw it.