http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney
How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
"A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger (PDF), in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denialâthe persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for thatâthis was the 1950sâand Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology.
How our brains fool us on climate, creationism, and the vaccine-autism link.
"A MAN WITH A CONVICTION is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point." So wrote the celebrated Stanford University psychologist Leon Festinger (PDF), in a passage that might have been referring to climate change denialâthe persistent rejection, on the part of so many Americans today, of what we know about global warming and its human causes. But it was too early for thatâthis was the 1950sâand Festinger was actually describing a famous case study in psychology.