Correcting Someone With Facts Often Makes Them Even More Misinformed, Scientists Show
You’ve been there before. You get in an argument with some pinhead, online or in real life, who is wrong about something. You hit them with a flurry of facts that authoritatively show them they are wrong about that thing. And you get? You get nowhere. Showing them facts only seems to make them dig in their heels and dedicate their lives to being wrong. Scientists have noticed this, too, and many of them have come to the same conclusion. Facts don’t work. There are some cases when simply offering someone the correct information will change their mind. If someone says its raining outside and you tell them to look out the window and it’s not raining, only the biggest contrarian would keep arguing. But if the point in question is tied to the person’s sense of self and identity, scientists say, forget it. An article in The New Yorker focuses on how a recent study by Brendan Nyhan, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, and a team of pediatricians