
The “backfire effect” is mostly a myth, a broad look at the research suggests - hhs
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/03/the-backfire-effect-is-mostly-a-myth-a-broad-look-at-the-research-suggests/
======
stupidcar
This is like one of those Knights and Knaves logic puzzles we used to do at
school:

Amy believes the backfire effect is real, whereas Ben believes it is fake. Amy
reads an article saying the backfire effect has been disproven, then passes
her new opinion on to Ben. What will be Ben's revised opinion of the backfire
effect be if 1) the backfire effect actually exists, 2) the backfire effect
doesn't exist.

~~~
balabaster
I find this premise amusing... I find it amusing because my ex (whose name
really is Aimee) often had opinions that my life experiences and education
suggested to me were suspect. Aimee used to do a bunch of reading, but the
material she read was often from sources or authors I didn't find credible and
thus while their arguments seemed plausible, they weren't enough to invalidate
my original opinion.

My name really is Ben. My thoughts and opinions on such matters were largely
unaffected by hers in many cases, unless she presented credible evidence that
led me to re-evaluate my opinion, which did occasionally happy. Often though,
it was just "someone else agrees with me, thus I'm right," which does nothing
to sway my opinion.

Two people having the same opinion doesn't make them right and doesn't negate
my opinion. It just means they both disagree with me. Humanity also believed
in the geocentric model of the universe at one point. That doesn't make it
right. It took one person to change the entire opinion of the world to the
heliocentric model. Now admittedly, I'm not Copernicus, but we're all capable
of finding evidence to support or refute our opinions on the world. It's just
that very often people use the opinions of others as support for their own
instead of exercising critical thinking and forming their own opinions.

~~~
RealityVoid
The thing is, forming your own oppinion is _hard_ and you need a great deal of
insight to reach some form of truth.

I, for example, if I lived a couple of hundred years back, would have probably
believed the world is flat, since, well, it's the easiest oppinion to have by
just looking around. The model we have now is incredibly sophisticated and not
at all intuitive, we just think it is because we're used to it. Things that we
are used to seem the most obvious and simple in the world.

We are limited with how much we can dig deep into stuff. So many times we have
to reffer to other people that know what they are doing. I, sometimes, even
reffer to myself at some different point in time. If I know at some time I
looked deeply at some problem and reached a conclusion then, I will just take
it for granted and not always retrace my thought process. It's a useful mental
shortcut, but one that can leave me making oppinions on old or incomplete
facts.

~~~
Retric
People did not really believe the world was flat hundreds of years ago.

Similarly the “new” world was in regular contact with the old for the last
several thousand years. It’s only 53 miles from North America to Asia, even
less if you include the two islands between them.

PS: We have a lot of ideas about how wrong people used to be. But, I suspect
most people never really formed an option on most of this stuff because they
never really considered the question.

~~~
phreeza
If they were in regular contact, why did smallpox have such a devastating
effect on Americans?

~~~
Retric
Population density. Smallpox dies out with lot’s of tiny isolated communities
with minimal contact to each other.

------
supergauntlet
This link isn't terribly blogspammy or anything, but the original article has
more information: [https://fullfact.org/blog/2019/mar/does-backfire-effect-
exis...](https://fullfact.org/blog/2019/mar/does-backfire-effect-exist/)

And the original paper:
[https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/backfire_report_fullfact....](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/backfire_report_fullfact.pdf)

~~~
gpvos
It's more readable, better organized, and shorter, too.

------
autoexec
So someone named Amy Sippet who works at a charity called Full Fact decided
it's mostly a myth, not after conducting studies or independent research but
after reading just 7 previous studies on the backfire effect and noting that
some studies didn't seem to her to support it and that most of the studies she
read were conducted in the US. The article links to and quotes from her
twitter account.

This major breakthrough in the social sciences shares space in the very same
article with an observation about how you can use Instagram to find "the
internet’s darkest corners.” and some random stuff about Apple.

Maybe it's just the backfire effect here, but I'm not really convinced.

~~~
sterkekoffie
Limiting a literature review to 7 studies based on frequency of citation is
pretty understandable, especially for a relatively young research topic. Of
the 2 studies which showed a significant backfire effect, the findings of the
first were considered "overstated and oversold" by its own authors and the
second only found evidence of the effect in one of four situations. The second
was also partially replicated in a later study which found no evidence of the
backfire effect.

That being said, the author of the review probably would not want you to be
convinced by a single pop-sci piece covering her work. This "major
breakthrough," as you describe it, does not in fact share space with any
tweets or mentions of Instagram, but can be found here:
[https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/backfire_report_fullfact....](https://fullfact.org/media/uploads/backfire_report_fullfact.pdf)

------
rsj_hn
In an age when nothing seems to replicate, this wouldn't surprise me. But

1\. There is an obvious conflict of interest in having a fact checking
organization claim to "debunk" studies showing that fact checking is
ineffective.

2\. This "refutation" is a press briefing, not a peer reviewed study, and
doesn't have a lot of facts to back up the claim, other than looking at the N
difference in only 7 handpicked studies.

This is an amusing example of what happens when so called authorities are held
to account. Let's say someone reports that fact checking organizations are a
waste of taxpayer dollars. Then the fact checking organization comes out with
a 'Fact Check: False'. It seems there should be some prohibition about being
an authority on criticisms of yourself.

~~~
avs733
I've always struggled with the phrase 'replication crisis.' Really we have a
'mindset to approach science crisis.' The replication crisis is a couple of
things to me...

1) A problem with how research is published and treated as 'new knowledge' \-
some of which is being solved (slowly) by efforts such as the OSF. Other
efforts include registered reports, journals for nonsignificant findings, etc.
The problem is journals seek to publish a 'contribution' and define
contribution in a way that misrepresents science.

2) A problem with the promotion and rewarding of academics...see 1 and also
the drive to produce work in academia results in rewarding minuscule steps
that don't have larger coherence because the paper not the impact is rewarded.
People get tenure for publications not scientific discoveries. This obviously
links to 1

3) Often replication failures are a feature not a bug - but fundamentally we
think about and talk about science in way to absolutist of a frame. This is
especially a problem in social sciences which try and perform 'science' to
gain equal treatment to 'hard science.' They aren't worse or better...they are
different, their science is harder because context matters - but it is still
science. There are myriad studies in psychology performed on white men from
Harvard in the 40's (forgive my facetiousness). If I rerun the experiment and
it 'fails to replicate' is the theory 'wrong', 'invalid', 'incomplete', or
context specific? The choice of term there is critical to a set of
philosophical beliefs about science that can actually imperil science by
making different experimental results into an _inherently_ bad thing.

------
rjkennedy98
This all depends on how you measure it. Take Roe v Wade for example. Abortion
pre-Roe v Wade was really not that big of a political issue. Just yesterday I
was listening to the radio on a long drive and a company called "Patriot
Network" was advertising a cellphone network for "Patriots". The reason?
Verizon and other big phone companies donate to Planned Parenthood.

~~~
sb057
Part of the reason it wasn't a very big issue pre-Roe v Wade is that on-demand
abortions were illegal in 46 states prior to it.

~~~
kirsebaer
"In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri,
passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation
that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape,
incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained
evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical
health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values,
reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976."
[https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-
ri...](https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-
origins-107133)

~~~
zaphar
There is an enormous amount of nuance in that statement. The real change that
occurred was that nuance evaporated from the discussion of the subject.

------
emmelaich
Meta -- but does anyone else get tired of the word 'myth'?

These days, instead of opinions and arguments being countered, we have 'myths'
busted.

It's even weirder when it is 'myth' you've never heard of.

~~~
keiru
Yes, it's tiresome. Not refering to this one in particular, but many internet
champions of truth aggrandize their Goliath to post shitty myth busting
articles. In a recent post I chose to say "mistaken belief" to avoid sounding
like captain fact-checker.

------
backfired
To paraphrase:

> The effect: " _An ideologue believes a (wrong) thing. You tell them, no.
> They double down. Your effort to refute has backfired._ " This is actually
> rare.

It doesn't matter, because we've all been there. We've all experienced clashes
of opinion, and none of us like being wrong, so we resist adjusting.

Lots of us do it. It's a natural part of childhood. Being afraid of the dark.
Believing in ghosts. Santa Clause. The Easter Bunny. The Tooth Fairy. How did
you cope?

What about other aspects of belief? Religion? What aspects of religion does
one regard as history? How many people remain religious in the face of
contrary evidence?

Suddenly, this effect seems less rare.

~~~
username90
The backfire effect is obviously not universal, otherwise it would be
impossible to teach for example Newtonian physics. So if you present strong
enough proof people will change their minds.

I think the problem is that people don't really learn what a strong proof is,
so when two people who each have a weak understanding of the topic tries to
argue both will see that the other is ignorant but not that themselves are
ignorant. After the discussion both will have correctly refuted a lot of
claims from the other side, thus "strengthening" their own views. If this
often happen to you then you are likely not as well informed as you think you
are.

In short, I believe that "you can't reason someone into a position that you
didn't reason yourself into" is true, while the popular "you can't reason
someone out of a position that they didn't reason themselves into" is wrong.

~~~
Torgo
Not necessary. Science advances when entrenched proponents of the old theory
die out.

------
ocschwar
I don't know. Having read it only makes me believe more strongly in the
backfire effect.

------
diminoten
"Fact finding organization finds that fact finding matters, despite some
rumors that facts don't matter."

Right.

------
doc_gunthrop
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor
to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider.” -Francis Bacon

------
Der_Einzige
The term used for this by philsophers at least after hegel is "the dialectic".
I've always thought that many philsophers uncritical acceptance of a
dialectical process within the world was absurd. I am happy to see some
evidence from science indicating this to be the case.

------
darkpuma
Belief in the backfire effect confirms the bias many people have towards
believing their political opponents are idiots, immune to rational thought.

~~~
Veen
That’s only true if you believe your own side and yourself aren’t just as
vulnerable.

~~~
darkpuma
I didn't say one side experiences this more than another.

There are rational people on all "sides". Rational people may come to disagree
with each other if they have different information available to them, or if
they simply have different priorities.

Anybody who thinks _all_ of their opponents are irrational, by virtue of being
their opponent, are themselves irrational in that respect. However that says
nothing about the political distribution of this particular cognitive bias. I
have made no claims concerning that.

------
dr_dshiv
"I didn't think the backfire effect was real, but now I'm not so sure."

Is there a catchy name to describe the effect of disbelieving social science
research?

~~~
spamizbad
Not sure, but social science research is currently in the midst of a
replication crisis. And not necessarily due to anyone acting in bad faith: you
can run an experiment twice a few months apart and get opposite results. No
idea on how to fix, but probably needs to invest in more robust experiment
design, larger samples, and perhaps more advanced statistical methods. Sadly
all of those demands cut against the "publish or perish" mentality in academia
which often favors quantity over quality. A shame, since most social science
researches want to do the best work possible but are constrained by $$$ and
the broader culture of expectations in academic research.

~~~
germanlee
It's in a replication crisis because pretty much none of it is science ( no
replicable testing possible - hypothesis, experiment, theory ). It's why
Richard Feynmann associated social science with pseudoscience.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWr39Q9vBgo)

Because real science destroyed the credibility of religion and religion in
much of the world is no longer a credible social control tool, the elites
needed a new form of religion to control society. That new religion is social
"science". Whereas religion controlled everything from economics, schooling,
family, culture, society, law, etc, now they all fall under the
pseudoscience/religion called social "science".

\---------------------------------------------

Reply to ziddoap.

Considering you tossed around "illumati-esque", I doubt you are interested.

I consider social science to be a pseudoscience for the same reason richard
feynmann did. Did you bother watching what he had to say?

Social "science" is a humanities. It belongs in the category with philosophy,
ethics, literature, religion, etc.

Just because I said it is a pseudoscience doesn't mean that I think it is
useless or bad necessarily. No more than I think literature, ethics,
philosophy or even religion is bad.

I just think social "science" is a "religion" trying to latch onto the good
name of real science. Just like creationism "science" or all the other fake
"science" trying to gain credibility by associating itself with science.

~~~
feanaro
I see this position somewhat often, almost unavoidably accompanied by a
reference to Feynman. The position is, of course, pure nonsense if you take a
few moments to think it through.

Not only has the world moved on drastically from when Feynman, a non-expert in
the area, wrote that essay, but it is also ludicrous to claim that a part of
existence is unamenable to scientific study. If it exists and has an effect,
it can be studied. There is no reason to believe human behaviour and thought
is beyond this.

~~~
CriticalCathed
>Not only has the world moved on drastically from when Feynman...

You're right, social science got even less replicable and less scientific.

>If it exists and has an effect, it can be studied.

Yes, you're right. But that doesn't mean that you can ground it in empirical
evidence or effectively apply the scientific method of inquiry. Philosophy is
a method of studying human behavior -- it is not, however, science. And for
substantially the same set of reasons the social sciences are also not
science.

~~~
feanaro
> You're right, social science got even less replicable and less scientific.

You'll need to substantiate this claim, of course.

> Yes, you're right. But that doesn't mean that you can ground it in empirical
> evidence or effectively apply the scientific method of inquiry.

Why not?

> Philosophy is a method of studying human behavior -- it is not, however,
> science. And for substantially the same set of reasons the social sciences
> are also not science.

You are simply repeating the old misconception I've hinted at: that human
behaviour is off-limits to scientific inquiry, even though it is real and
physical. I fail to see why this would be the case. We are, after all, talking
about measurable, quantifiable things inputs and outputs regarding human
behaviour.

~~~
Kaiyou
Because most humans behave sufficiently different from each other. Even if you
experiment on a subset of humans and get knowledge about this subset, a
different subset of humans could react completely different. It's so bad that
even the same subset of humans could react completely different if you do the
same test 50 years later.

~~~
feanaro
> Even if you experiment on a subset of humans and get knowledge about this
> subset, a different subset of humans could react completely different.

They _could_ , but that does not mean they _do_. There are quite obviously
rules and patterns to much of human functioning. Denying so seems like human
hubris.

Even if each human displays unique behaviour for a particular trait, knowing
that it is so for that particular trait is useful and therefore still amenable
to scientific exploration. Even if humans reacted randomly in some situation,
the random behaviour would be subject to a probability distribution and
knowing it would be useful.

It's hard for me to see where exactly the leap to "it's impossible to study
human behaviour scientifically" is necessary, particularly when we have so
much evidence to the contrary.

~~~
Kaiyou
It's not science if you don't reliably get the same output if you provide the
same input. It's useful, sure. But it's not science.

~~~
feanaro
Sorry, but this just sounds like a deepity. Science is a _process_ , not a
result.

It holds for most of science most of the time that you don't reliably get the
same output if you provide the same input (because you don't know all the
variables or the entire set of equations). Only when a phenomenon is
completely known does this stop being true.

But when is a phenomenon completely known? After all, for a long time we've
known classical mechanics to be completely known... Except it wasn't. And
during the time we thought it was, you could get into exactly the type of
situation you describe above: for the "same" input, you could get a different
output, depending on the components of the stress-energy tensor you were not
aware were relevant. The effect was subtle there of course, but there are many
examples where it's not (e.g. the entirety of biology and medicine).

So I disagree with this description of science.

EDIT: Also, it completely slipped my mind the first time around because it's
such a stupidly strong counterargument, but by your definition the entirety of
modern physics (quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and beyond) is not
science.

~~~
Kaiyou
Science is useful because it has the power to predict. It gains this power
from getting the same output when providing the same input. If what you are
doing doesn't have the power to predict it's not science. You can still apply
the scientific method to what you are doing and if you're applying that method
you might as well call yourself a scientist and what your doing science, but
then again, a few hundred years ago scientists didn't yet know that things
like alchemy weren't science, so they applied the scientific method to it and
figured out that it isn't useful.

------
orblivion
That thing you thought was true all your life is actually false.

1 year later: That thing you thought was false for the last year was actually
true.

At every turn trying to make us feel stupid. It's almost like somebody is
trying to drive us crazy.

~~~
britch
Understanding is a process. Believing what we have the best evidence to
believe is not stupid. If the evidence changes and you shift your belief you
are not stupid.

I think the reality is that humans are very complex, especially how we relate
to each other. Studies that try to boil down our behavior and provide
actionable results are highly demanded, but are very difficult to prove.

~~~
greglindahl
Believing the best evidence is not a good idea if the evidence is weak. One
thing that many science journalists are not very good at is conveying how
strong the evidence is.

~~~
tempestn
It's a good idea as long as the belief is proportionately weakly held.

~~~
RealityVoid
But his is not the way most people think about things. For most people it's
white or black, it is or it isn't. Speaking of degrees of belief makes you
look like an indecisive fool at times.

~~~
tempestn
If I were running for office I might be a bit careful about how I expressed
such things, but having a degree of belief proportional to the degree of
evidence appears the opposite of foolish to me. I hold that belief moderately
strongly.

