In 2004, researchers studied 49 people who believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible or partly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, to see what their reaction would  be when confronted by evidence, straight from the Bush administration, that this wasn’t true. What the researchers found is that — surprise, surprise — people believe what they want to believe:

Of 49 people included in the study who believed in such a connection, only one shed the certainty when presented with prevailing evidence that it wasn’t true.

The rest came up with an array of justifications for ignoring, discounting or simply disagreeing with contrary evidence — even when it came from President Bush himself.

The voters weren’t dupes of an elaborate misinformation campaign, the researchers concluded; rather, they were actively engaged in reasoning that the belief they already held was true.

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