Ms bk

“Think back to science. Science has a structure that is self-correcting. By making testable predictions, scientists are able to see when their theories are going wrong, which, in turn, hands them the impetus to create new theories. But if scientists as a community ignored inconvenient evidence, or spun it, or covered it up, they would achieve nothing.”

“Consider again the doctors who operated on Elaine Bromiley, the case explored at the start of the book. At the time their behavior may have seemed like a blatant attempt to avoid the external repercussions of their mistake, like a reprimand from management or legal action from the patient’s family. But we can now see that it also bears the classic hallmarks of dissonance-reduction. The doctors didn’t want to admit their mistake to themselves.”

“This is a classic response predicted by cognitive dissonance: we tend to become more entrenched in our beliefs (like those in the capital punishment experiment, whose views became more extreme after reading evidence that challenged their views and the members of the cult who became more convinced of the truth of their beliefs after the apocalyptic prophecy failed). “I have no doubt that they will find the clearest possible evidence of S weapons of mass destruction [my italics],” C said.”