Thread: Facts Make People Dumber

Here Are 5 Infuriating Examples of Facts Making People Dumber | Mother Jones

On Monday, I reported on the latest study to take a bite out of the idea of human rationality. In a paper just published in Pediatrics, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth University and his colleagues showed that presenting people with information confirming the safety of vaccines triggered a "backfire effect," in which people who already distrusted vaccines actually became less likely to say they would vaccinate their kids.

Unfortunately, this is hardly the only example of such a frustrating response being documented by researchers. Nyhan and his coauthor, Jason Reifler of the University of Exeter, have captured several others, as have other researchers. Here are some examples:

Originally Posted by phidan

We had a thread about this awhile back about when people are presented with a data, they are are unable to interpret the data properly if it does not go along with their beliefs.

If i remember correctly that was a pretty good thread. This one though.... meh, not so much. Right from the outset only republicans qualify as "people".