People in the grip of error

“One of the hallmarks of the Manhattan mentality is the inability to draw the most obvious inferences from the facts in front of your eyes.  I have often accused Manhattan groupthinkers of flat refusal to get outside their cushy homes and offices and walk around town, thinking that if they actually walked around and observed things they could not help but draw the obvious conclusions.  Well, it's really too much to ask them to walk around, but how about putting a chart of data in front of their eyes?  No, that won't work either:  it seems that even if data on what's going on are collected and presented in a very clear fashion, a Manhattan groupthinker will continue to grasp tightly to his preconceptions in the face of the evidence…” Francis Menton, “The Manhattan Contrarian” http://manhattancontrarian.com

“How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline: the sociology of error…Whenever smart people cling to an outlandishly incorrect idea despite substantial evidence to the contrary, something interesting is at work…some of those forces were ideological in nature, matters of social prejudice and convention. Some revolved around conceptual limitations, failures of imagination and analysis…”   ― Steven Johnson, The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World. Page 15, 126