Key Insight
One of the genuine pleasures of empirical research — if one is doing it right — is discovering that you were wrong. Not pleasurable in the moment, necessarily. But deeply satisfying in what it means about the kind of inquiry you are engaged in.
This post documents a case in which Dan Kahan found empirical evidence that contradicted a prior claim he had made, and why he regards this as a positive rather than embarrassing outcome.
The specific case involved a prediction derived from cultural cognition theory about how a particular variable would affect risk perception. The prediction was clear, the theory well-developed, and the data carefully designed. The data did not support the prediction.
Finding that you were wrong means your empirical claims are falsifiable — which means they are genuinely scientific. A theory that cannot be falsified by any possible evidence is not a scientific theory; it is an ideology. The capacity to be wrong is what distinguishes science from cultural cognition.
This is directly connected to the Cultural Cognition Project's broader concerns about motivated reasoning. Identity-protective cognition operates precisely by making individuals resistant to disconfirming evidence. A scientist immune to disconfirmation is exhibiting the same epistemic pathology that produces cultural polarization in lay citizens.