Times of London: Obama and the conspiracy theorists

[stopbush]

(snip)

"Nyhan and Reifler provided their research subjects with newspaper articles on diverse subjects — the Iraq war and stem-cell research among them — which incorporated errors of fact, such as, for instance, that weapons of mass destruction had been discovered in Iraq. They surveyed the group for their views and then distributed further articles. These put right the misperception. Or should have done. But that is not what the academics found when they re-examined their subjects.

"The second survey of attitudes showed two things. First, correcting a misperception doesn’t really work when the original misperception fits snugly with the subject’s ideology. Second, and worse still, attempting to correct errors often produces a backlash, with the error becoming more firmly believed.

"Three weeks ago Nyhan and Reifler published results of their experiments specifically on President Obama. They were investigating the persistence among a minority — about 12 per cent, or so — of the false idea that the President is a Muslim. Again, they showed how difficult such notions are to shift among those inclined to believe them.

"The statement “The President is not a Muslim” is ineffective. Indeed, it makes the belief, the association between Obama and Muslim, stronger. The statement “The President is a Christian” appears to work better. This may account for the fact that, as one US commentator has recorded, Obama talks more of his Christianity in public than George W. Bush did. But there is a wonderful little twist to the data. The academics found, however, that “The President is a Christian” worked in only one condition — if a non-white person was present in the room and the survey respondent was trying to please him."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/daniel_finkelstein/article6485447.ece

Anybody who has ever done battle with CTists of any stripe knows the truth of the results cited above.