Science Based Medicine on The Unpersuadables

Harriet Hall writes about an interesting item for the Must Read list

..Sadly, some people are unpersuadable. They might as well be saying “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts.” We have seen plenty of glaring examples in the comments section of this blog. Will Storr wrote a book The Unpersuadables: Adventures with the Enemies of Science about his struggle to understand the phenomenon. He did a great job of investigative reporting, interviewing people with strange beliefs, spending time with them and also with their critics, and reading pertinent research.

Storr found that discussing evolution with religious fundamentalists was:

…like being a tourist in another Universe… Simple facts and basic logic just don’t work the way I had assumed… facts proved entirely ineffective, and they were ineffective to a spectacular and baffling extent.

...He found that he liked the people he interviewed. They were not stupid. What made them so unpersuadable? He quickly realized that he answer was not intelligence or education or logic. Something else was going on, but what was it?...

Read more at SBM