Counterintuitive Facts (82): Why You Should Never Try to Convince a Fool

I. Suppose your friend shared an obvious rumor. "Drinking vinegar cures cancer." "5G towers spread COVID." "Earth is flat." You kindly gathered scientific papers, authoritative sources, refuted point by point, told them it's false. You thought they'd say: "Thank you, I understand now."

II. Actually, they'll probably say: "You don't understand. Experts are all bought off!" "This is ancestral wisdom!" "They don't want you to know the truth!" And from then on, they'll believe that rumor even more firmly. And might block you. Your refutation made them more stubborn.

III. This is the Backfire Effect. In 2010, political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler first systematically studied this phenomenon.