Question: I am fairly new to this forum but I am repeatably running into the same problem. This is the user who has found a formula or data on the internet which they think can be applied to a problem. They go ahead and post or quote this blindly without giving any thought to its applicability and then insist they are correct because they can refer to some web page. Can we do anything in the guidelines reputation or flagging system to discourage this behavior?

The voting system on answers seems to address the problem there. But it does not apply to comments, Perhaps there should be a flag category a little stronger than not helpful say "just plain wrong". If upheld it could lead to a loss of a little reputation which might just make people think before posting spurious information.

So far I have succeeded in remaining polite but the temptation to call some people idiots is becoming overwhelming.

Answer: 
In addition to the other answers, moderators can take some flak when community moderation isn't allowed to take it's course before they zoom in and close something. It takes 5 users to close a question, but just one moderator. They tend to reserve that action for cases that might fall between the cracks, or for cases where there is a reason to get something closed FAST (like site sabotage, profanity,...)

The places where flags are most useful are for things that won't work their way onto the close cue, like questions posted as answers to similar questions, answers that are really comments, etc.
Flags are meant for signaling exception conditions to the moderators.

Closing a post is routine business. You only need 3000 rep to be able to vote to close questions. We have a reasonably large number of users at 3000 or higher, so bad questions will get closed soon enough. If you don't have 3000 rep yet, just move on and let someone else handle it.

Early in the site's history, there were few users that could vote to close. Back then, flagging a question to be closed made some sense. It no longer does today.

The privilege of flagging to close is still there. It's not wrong to use it, but also not necessary and now how the site operates today. If you see a question that should be closed, just move along and let others handle it until you have the necessary rep. You could still leave a message telling the OP what is wrong with the question, and warn him that it will likely be closed if he doesn't attend to it soon.