Evidence based smear campaigns

Couldn't the same thing be said of left-wingers too? Isn't this painting with an awfully big brush, as if you have pro-right tendencies that you will forever be locked in a right-wing box?One could even point out that the flaw in this social experiment is that it's self-refuting, in that it demonizes a certain political spectrum by hypocritically doing the very thing they allege the other side is doing.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Yes, absolutely. I know people who refuse to believe that Obama has contributed more to the national debt than any U.S. president in history (even more than the bloated whore, Bush, and that's after adjusting for inflation), even when clear evidence proves it.Some people don't like to admit they're wrong when they've invested so much time on a person or a position they've committed themselves to, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.I see this as being a human problem, not something consigned soley to "right-wingers." That's absurd and self-refuting concept. This whole social "experiment" is suspect of the very thing it claims against others -- blinded by bias.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

Which should then lead the question what the purpose of the experiment was to begin with if not a smear. You're right, Left/Right terms are often muddled, especially internationally. I think then we have to look at it in terms of what most Western nations identify it as being.Since I take both left and right positions, generally socially liberal and fiscally conservative, I don't consider myself as either Right or Left on the political spectrum. I view myself as a Constitutional Moderate or a Libertarian. But my country is deeply divided politically and I feel these kind of experiements only further lead to disunity.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

My statement is directly in context with the question posed to the audience in regard to personal experience. The question was raised from a personal perspective. I don't know how the average "leftist" would respond. I agree, which leads me to question 1. What the political persuasion of the experimenters is and 2. What the purpose of the experiment is.I personally have seen much cognitive dissonance coming from the Right to include the most ridiculous instances of protective Bush (which really is them trying to save face for backing him). That is not in question. The question is why this wouldn't apply to the other foot.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

I've read through a bit of the paper and have to say that it is well-written and took a lot in to consideration. So in those regards I am impressed. I also found one of the answers to my question:

quote:

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For very liberal subjects, the correction worked as expected, making them more likely to disagree with the statement that Iraq had WMD compared with controls. The correction did not have a statistically significant effect on individuals who described themselves as liberal, somewhat left of center, or centrist. But most importantly, the effect of the correction for individuals who placed themselves to the right of center ideologically is statistically significant and positive. In other words, the correction backfiredconservatives who received a correction telling them that Iraq did not have WMD were more likely to believe that Iraq had WMD than those in the control condition.21 (The interpretation of other variables does not change in Model 2.)

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What are we to make of this finding? One possible interpretation, which draws on the persuasion literature, would point to source credibility as a possible explanationconservatives are presumably likely to put more trust in President Bush and less trust in the media than other subjects in the sample (though we do not have data to support this conjecture). However, it is not clear that such an interpretation can explain the observed data in a straightforward way. Subjects in the no-correction and correction conditions both read the same statement from President Bush. Thus the backfire effect must be the result of the experimentally manipulated correction. If subjects simply distrusted the media, they should simply ignore the corrective information. Instead, however, conservatives were found to have moved in the wrong directiona reaction that is hard to attribute to simple distrust. We believe the result is consistent with our theoretical account of goal-directed information processing.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston

You can't understand it because you're a rational and humble person. Some people fear being wrong more than anything else and fear the embarassment that comes with it.Some people would rather Bush and/or Obama fail just so they could say they were right and save face rather than hoping to be proven wrong for the gain of everyone. IOW, they would rather their position be right than to have what is best for the nation and international relations. Sad, but true.

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"Political correctness is tyranny with manners." -- Charlton Heston