The Truth Hurts: People Who Can't Use Facts To Win An Argument Use Untestable Morals

Have you ever argued with someone who seemed to have a comeback for everything you said? Your fact-based arguments didn’t convince them. Neither did the fact what you were saying is common sense. Actually, it just seems like they’re grasping for whatever argument will stand against what you say. This happens because people will go to great lengths to qualify their worldviews, regardless of whether or not it’s true. And a new study now finds that when facts don’t support these views, these people will tread into territory we can’t prove wrong.

“Our new research… examined a slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs,” Troy Campbell and Justin Friesen, authors of the new paper, wrote for Scientific American. “Of course, sometimes people just dispute the validity of specific facts. But we find that people sometimes go one step further and… they reframe an issue in untestable ways. This makes potential important facts and science ultimately irrelevant to the issue.”