How facts backfire. Facts could actually make misinformation *stronger*

It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

A very good article highlighting the research of Brendan Nyhan and James Kuklinkski.

Interestingly, one experiment by Nyhan shows that people "given a self-affirmation exercise were more likely to consider new information". This would seem to confirm the beliefs of those who think skeptics and scientists must take a kinder, gentler approach to communicating in their respective fields. "The more threatened people feel, the less likely they are to listen to dissenting opinions, and the more easily controlled they are."

In one study by Kuklinski though, if people received "information directly from researcher in a highly interactive way" they were quick to adjust their beliefs based on the evidence.