December 3, 2008

The Denial of Research Findings

"I read it, I understand it, but I just don't agree with it"

This statement is one of my pet peeves. When presented with a piece of research that does not fit in with their world view or ideology, students deny the validity of it over and over, based on an explanation that is nothing more than "that's how I feel about it, and that's all I can say about it."

This infuriates me. I remember this one time talking about body language and how much of our communication it gets across. This one person could not understand how it is 70% of our communication. We had a research article on it, we laid out the hows and whys (gestures, posture, proxemics) for them and still, they didn't budge. It was maddening.

I have encountered this denial in most all of my classes but the issue that stands out most clearly is that of addictions. No matter how much research you show certain people about harm reduction, they will never budge. You can show that it saves money, lives and cleans up the community, but it is all for naught. How to bridge that divide? I thought cost analysis would work, but that's failed for me. Where to go from here?

"I know what it says, I just don't think it will work" Argggghhh!!!
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3 comments:

Tanya said...

Remember the cult we discussed a while back? ;)

Anonymous said...

The ignorant will come around, if not by formal education then by karma. They can only act stupid for so long. Eventually, their ignorance will sneak up on them from behind and bite the in the keester. Then they will learn. Maybe.

Thanks for the link to my Flickr photostream. :-)

antiSWer said...

"Thanks for the link to my Flickr photostream. :-)"

No problem. I always enjoy the content. You take very meaningful photographs and it's one of few streams I follow.

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