Rand Paul Actually Makes Sense Again

I could not disagree more with Senator Rand Paul on matters such as government support for medical care for the poor but on government electronic surveillance, he is spot on: Rand Paul, Big Brother Actually Is Watching Us, Monitoring hundreds of millions of phone records is an extraordinary invasion of privacy Wall Street Journal (June 2013). &&& The dynamic evidence page

Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Update: How to download my evidence marshaling software (MarshalPlan)

A. Background

Years ago David A. Schum and I developed the notion of an evidence marshaling system. We laid out the underlying theory of this evidence marshaling system in A Theory of Preliminary Fact Investigation. We developed a kind of computer embodiment, or computer-based expression, of our idea of an evidence marshaling system. Eventually we decided to call our system "MarshalPlan."

Some of my more recent thoughts about the theoretical foundations of MarshalPlan may be found here (long blog post called "The Ramshackle -- and Logical -- Character of Explicit Human Factual Inference" (June 18, 2011)).

In the years following my seven(!)-year NSF-supported collaboration with David Schum, I continued to tinker with MarshalPlan. I did so by both modifying and adding "stacks," or files. (Each stack corresponds to an evidence marshaling strategy, or method.) The most recent iteration of the evidence marshaling software is MarshalPlan 5.5.

A few years ago  I began to make MarshalPlan available via the internet.  However, since I am not a programmer and since I lack many basic computer skills, I have not managed to devise a single method of accessing or download in MarshalPlan 5.5 that works for everyone. This is why I lay out two or more ways for you to download MarshalPlan. One of these downloading methods should work for you.

B. Caveats

Before you download or access MarshalPlan, however, please consider the following important caveats:

1. The current iteration of MarshalPlan -- MarshalPlan 5.5 -- is not a prototype of a working application suitable for real-time and real-world use. Far from it! However, MarshalPlan 5.5 goes beyond just scratchings (text) that explain how an evidence marshaling application might work. Even so, it is not far from the truth to say that MarshalPlan is mainly an elaborate visual illustration of some of the directions that development of software for marshaling evidence in legal settings should take. But, but ... MarshalPlan 5.5 is a bit more than an illustration of possible future directions for research and development. MarshalPlan as it now stands is useful for pedagogical (i.e., teaching) purposes. Moreover, MarshalPlan is creeping ever closer to being something akin to a genuine software prototype suitable for real-world and real-time use. 

2. In MarshalPlan 5.5 there are only brief explanations of some of the evidence marshaling strategies found there. Other marshaling strategies, however, are described and explained more fully. For a comprehensive account of the thinking that went into MarshalPlan, please see the readings mentioned above. If you want a truly comprehensive theory-laden explanation of MarshalPlan, you will have to invite me to give a leisurely talk (preferably on a tropical island or some other attractive venue).

3. A few buttons and links may not work. If that happens, try other buttons and links. (Otherwise resort to expletives. You have my permission.) 

4. MarshalPlan 5.5 is not set up to be linked to a database. This is a most serious deficiency for any possible real-world use in a context such as law practice.

C. Instructions

Try one or more of the following methods to view and play with MarshalPlan 5.5:

1. MarshalPlan on the web: If you use the now-ancient Firefox 3.x and you are willing to accept a plug-in, you may be able to view MarshalPlan 4.0 in your (Firefox) browser. To try this, click this link.

2. You can download MarshalPlan 5.5 for use on a Windows computer by  going to http://tillers.net/MarshalPlan.5.5/ and opening the subfolder "Windows" and then clicking on MarshalPlan 5.5exe.

Postscript, 2013.10.04: A free open source version of the scripting language for MarshalPlan is now available here; it is called "LiveCode Community."





Caveat: I reserve my copyright to MarshalPlan. This means in part that you cannot distribute, lease, or use any version of MarshalPlan for profit or for commercial purposes without my express written permission.

3. As of 6/11/2013,  you will very probably not be able to run the MarshalPlan 5.5 downloaded in this way (see par. 2 above) on an Apple computer. The Apple OS probably still strips a thus-downloaded MarshalPlan of the ability to run on Apple computers. Sorry! {Take your grievance if any to the paternalistic Apple Corporation, which likes closed worlds, particularly those that it controls.} But there is a solution! Send an email message to peter@tillers.net and ask me to share a relevant DropBox folder with you. I will happily oblige.

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Speech Recognition Software (for Legal Writing)

I have (finally) joined the ranks of users of speech recognition software (Dragon - Legal Edition). I hope this gambit works. (I think it will.)
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Trial Planning: Keeping Your Evidentiary Ducks in Order

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Jack Shafer on Government Collection of Reams of Personal Data

Jack Shafer, The spy who came in for your soul Reuters (June 8, 2013):

Snippet:

"Faster than you can say evaporation-condensation-precipitation, I expect this week’s exposés to produce additional investigations that will produce more leaks and further scoops about our digital records. This will now fuel new cycles of reporting, leaks and scoops — and another, and another — as new sources are cultivated and reportorial scraps gathering mold in journalists’ notebooks gain new relevance and help break stories.

"Greenwald’s storm will continue to rage because, I suspect, the story won’t be limited to just phone records or Web data. Ultimately, it will be about the government’s pursuit of all the digital breadcrumbs we produce as necessary byproducts of day-to-day life — and phone records and Web data are just a small part.

"Bank records, credit history, travel records, credit card records, EZPass data, GPS phone data, license-plate reader databases, Social Security and Internal Revenue Service records, facial-recognition databases at the Department of Motor Vehicles and elsewhere, even 7-Eleven surveillance videos comprise information lodes that are of equal or greater value to the national security establishment than phone and Web files. It doesn’t sound paranoid to conclude that the government has reused, or will reuse, the interpretation of the Patriot Act it presented to the secret FISA court in its phone record and Prism data requests to grab these other data troves.

"Lest I sound like a Fourth Amendment hysteric, I understand there’s nothing automatically sacrosanct about any of the digital trails we leave behind. Lawful subpoenas can liberate all sorts records about you, electronic or otherwise.

"What’s breathtaking about these two government surveillance programs that the Guardian and theWashington Post have revealed is that they’re vast collections of data about hundreds of millions of people suspected of no wrongdoing and not part of any civil action. Defending the phone-record cull, National Intelligence Director James R. Clapper explained this week that smaller sets of information aren’t very useful in screening for and identifying “terrorism-related communications,” hence all must collected."

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Neuroscience, Deception, Neurolaw & More

See C-Span for an interview with Sally Satel.

See her book Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience (2013).

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Excellent Op-Ed by Gail Collins on NSA Spying and Obama

Gail Collins,  Intelligence for Dummies NYTimes (June 7, 2013).

Snippets (but do read the entire op-ed column):

"'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,' President Obama assured the American people on Friday. Well, probably nobody. And, if they are, it’s under an entirely different part of the program.

...

"Let’s start with the real basics. Does the N.S.A. really need all the stuff it’s collecting? Ever since the attack on the World Trade Center, the agency has been exploding. It has an enormous operation outside of Washington, and it is building another million-square-foot complex in the Utah desert. It collects an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of communication a day. 'When you have the ability to get more and more data, the natural inclination is to get as much as possible,' said Representative Henry Waxman, the former chairman of the House oversight committee.

...

"...[W] e do seem to have an ominous combination: an agency with a bad record on thriftiness, and practically everything it spends money on is secret. 'It’s a tough balancing act,' an Obama administration official told me. 'It’s incumbent on us and Congress to do the job of scrutinizing the budget, both in terms of cost and efficacy.'

"Yeah, what about Congress? The president keeps saying that “Congress is continually briefed” about security issues. In reality, the briefing is pretty much confined to the members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, who are sworn to secrecy. Many of them also have a longstanding record of being in the pocket of the intelligence community. A few of the others had been desperately trying to warn their colleagues about the telephone-call program without breaking their vow of silence. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon did everything but tap dance the information in Morse code.

...

"I wouldn’t rely on Congress to keep things under control. It’s really up to the president. As a candidate, Obama looked as if he would be great at riding herd on the N.S.A.’s excesses. But if he has ever seriously pushed back on the spy set, it’s been kept a secret. Meanwhile, the administration scarfs up reporters’ e-mails and phone records in its obsessive war against leaks.

...

"“I welcome this debate,” Obama said Friday. “I think it’s healthy for our democracy.” Under further questioning, he said that he definitely didn’t welcome the leaks. Without which, of course, there would be no debate.

"Do you remember how enthusiastic people were about having a president who once taught constitutional law? I guess we’ve learned a lesson."

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

How PRISM May Work

This is an interesting and important technical discussion of how PRISM could work (and enable NSA to read, e.g., your e-mail messages) without the knowledge or consent of ISPs such as Google and Microsoft:

PRISM: Here's how the NSA wiretapped the Internet ZDNet (June 8 [sic], 2013).

N.B. ZDNet astutely noticed that President Obama parsed his words very carefully on June 7 when denying that NSA's surveillance programs are unduly intrusive.

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Compounded Misrepresentations by Eminent People

A staff member did it!(?)

Why is it that eminent people with false statements on their c.v.'s and grant applications are allowed to blame anonymous staff members for the misrepresentations? See, e.g., Jennifer Schuessler, Leader of Scholarly Society To Step Aside During Inquiry Into Her Credentials NYTimes  (June 6, 2013). If it's your c.v., it's your obligation to read it and stand behind it!

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

America, the Surveillance State

Dan Roberts & Spencer Ackerman, America's surveillance state: anger swells after data revelations The Guardian (online) (June 6, 2013).

Snippets:

"The scale of America's surveillance state was laid bare on Wednesday as senior politicians revealed that the US counter-terrorism effort had swept up swaths of personal data from the phone calls of millions of citizens for years.

"After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.

...

"Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned in broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort of widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as "obscenely outrageous".

"The Verizon order was made under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa) as amended by the Patriot Act of 2001, passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But one of the authors of the Patriot Act, Republican congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, said he was troubled by the Guardian revelations. He said that he had written to the attorney general, Eric Holder, questioning whether 'US constitutional rights were secure'.

"He said: 'I do not believe the broadly drafted Fisa order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act. Seizing phone records of millions of innocent people is excessive and un-American.'...

"[White House spokesman Josh Earnest said] the [FISA] order only relates to the so-called metadata surrounding phone calls rather than the content of the calls themselves. 'The order reprinted overnight does not allow the government to listen in on anyone's telephone calls,' Earnest said.

"'The information acquired does not include the content of any communications or the name of any subscriber. It relates exclusively to call details, such as a telephone number or the length of a telephone call.'

"But such metadata can provide authorities with vast knowledge about a caller's identity. Particularly when cross-checked against other public records, the metadata can reveal someone's name, address, driver's licence, credit history, social security number and more. Government analysts would be able to work out whether the relationship between two people was ongoing, occasional or a one-off."

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Charles Savage & Edward Wyatt, U.S. Maintains Vast Database of Phone Calls, Lawmakers Say, NYTimes (June 6, 2013):

"As the scope of the government’s collection of logs of Americans’ domestic communications started to come into greater focus on Thursday, privacy groups erupted. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union said that group — a client of Verizon’s business unit — was considering filing a lawsuit to challenge the 'dragnet' surveillance, and said liberals would be furious had such a program been disclosed under a Republican administration.

"'A pox on all the three houses of government,' he said. 'On Congress, for legislating such powers, on the FISA court for being such a paper tiger and rubber stamp, and on the Obama administration for not being true to its values.

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

"Narrative Science" and the CIA

The entanglement of artificial intelligence, commerce, and the CIA makes the following blog post sound very strange to my ears:
    Maxime Fischer-Zernin, Narrative Science: The CIA is Investing in Artificial Intelligence That Actually Works (blog post) policym1c (June 6?, 2013).
Can someone please explain this post or this business about Narrative Science-CIA-for-profit?-investment-etc. to me? The entire thing sounds weird.

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

The Case of the Angel of Death

Duncan Campbell, Fresh evidence challenges 'Angel of Death' nurse Colin Norris's conviction, Guardian (May 20, 2013):

"Fresh medical and scientific evidence is being published this week that campaigners hope will lead to the release of Colin Norris, the former nurse and so-called 'Angel of Death' serving life for the murder or attempted murder of five elderly women.

"The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has confirmed it is undertaking an active re-examination of the case.

"Norris, 37, originally from Glasgow, was convicted at Newcastle crown court in 2008 following a 19-week trial. It was alleged that he disliked elderly patients and had deliberately injected the women with insulin. The case had echoes of the late Dr Harold Shipman, who was convicted of murdering 15 of his patients but believed to have killed many more.

"However, a new study challenges much of the evidence on which Norris was convicted. Campaigners are hopeful that fresh evidence will lead to an appeal in which it can be shown that the women could have died of natural causes."

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Whitey Bulger

The Whitey Bulger trial starts this coming Thursday, June 10. This should be an interesting trial - in many different ways.


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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Letting Go (of Books etc.)

Stanley Fish, Moving On, NYTimes (May 27, 2013):

Snippets:

"I have sold my books. Not all of them, but most of them. I held on to the books I might need while putting the finishing touches on a manuscript that is now with my publisher. I also kept the books I will likely need when I begin my next project in the fall. But the books that sustained my professional life for 50 years ... are gone.

 ...

"The ostensible reason for this de-acquisition is a move from a fair-sized house to a much smaller apartment. It is true, as Anthony Powell said in a title, that books do furnish a room, but in this case, too many books, too little room. But the deeper reason is that it was time. What I saw on the shelves was work to which I would never return....

"... I had always thought that I could return to my annotated copies of familiar texts and pick up where I left off. That fantasy, I now see, was part and parcel of the core fantasy that I would just go on forever, defending old positions, formulating new ones, attending annual conferences, contributing to essay collections, speaking at various universities, teaching the same old courses, confidently answering the same old questions.

"I’m not going to go on forever. ...

"... Behind these musings is a word I can barely utter — 'retirement.' ..."

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I recently retired from full-time teaching - but not from writing. So I threw away some of my books, but not most of them. In any event, quite a few of my books are for purely personal pleasure and are still unread. So I can't throw those away, can I?

• Addendum: Some of my "academic" interests survive my retirement; some of the questions I ask myself genuinely interest (and preoccupy) me.

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

The Crack Baby Story: Another Example of the Abuse of Statistics

The recent misleading report of an explosion of sexual assaults in the U.S. military  - endlessly cited by politicians, including the President - is not unique. The media (and politicians) have a long history of abusing statistics. See, e.g., Michael Winerip, Revisiting the ‘Crack Babies’ Epidemic That Was Not NYTimes (May 20, 2013).

 
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Role of Conjecture in Investigation

The following passage has implications for investigation in legal settings:

"The mark of a good theory is that it makes unexpected predictions that can be put to the test. If the predictions are incorrect you throw out the theory. Supersymmetry, for example – one of the current proposals for how to go beyond the physics of the Standard Model – is beginning to look shaky because we aren't seeing what the theory predicts we should see. It is interesting that, if Weinstein is correct, you would be hard-pushed to stumble on this stuff in the huge slew of data being generated by the LHC. You'd never find this from going from data to theory. Theory is needed to tell you where to look." (Marcus du Sautoy, Eric Weinstein may have found the answer to physics' biggest problems, The Guardian (May 23, 2013).)

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

A True Profile in Courage

Barack Obama: a genuine profile in courage. I have had reservations about some of Obama's policies. But he has now won me over 100%. That's because President Obama has just proclaimed again his determination to close Guantanamo and reduce injustice to those people who are needlessly detained there - and his explanation of the importance of doing this is just magnificent. See the C-Span video of his speech. 

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Those Blinking Declarations!

Oh, real-world evidence problems are so messy! Consider the case in which the victim of a homicide - before his death - allegedly identified his killer by blinking his eyes three times. See Lisa Cornwell (AP reporter), Ohioan to appeal conviction in 'dying blinks' case Houston Chronicle (May 17, 2013). One thinks of Stephen Hawking.

There were "mundane" problems in the Ohio murder case.

For example, the paralyzed victim had been treated with drugs. The victim "failed to respond" to some questions. Sometimes it was "unclear" how often the victim blinked. During questioning, the victim was shown only one photograph, a photo of the defendant.

 The victim died about two weeks after he was questioned by the police.

 

Did the blinks amount to a "dying declaration"? (Did he think he was dying, did he think his death was imminent, etc.?)

 

If they did, were the victim's statements "testimonial" for purposes of contemporary Confrontation Clause jurisprudence? (I hesitate to call it "jurisprudence," but ..., oh well.)

 

Was the identification procedure so unduly suggestive that it violated the federal constitutional guarantee(s) of Due Process?

 

But, above all (I think), is this question: Did the jury have sufficient evidence to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the killer?

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Proposed new standards for expert witnesses in family court cases in England and Wales

New standards for expert evidence in family courts announced, Consultation launched on exclusion of ‘so-called experts who are not up to scratch’ Fanily Law Week (May 16, 2013?):

The Ministry of Justice has proposed introducing new standards for expert evidence adduced in family proceedings so that such evidence can be given only by qualified, experienced and recognised professionals. 

The government says that for too long there has been an increasing trend in England and Wales for expert witnesses to provide unnecessary and costly evidence – in the form of further written statements, clarifications and additional court appearances. This, continues the Ministry of Justice, can cause major delays in child care cases and in the worst examples this has led to cases being forced to start again.

Under the new plans, for which there will be a consultation lasting nine weeks, experts who are well-qualified and experienced will continue to provide their service in advising the family courts – but (what it terms) 'the so-called experts who provide evidence which is simply not up to scratch' will be excluded.

Family Justice Minister Lord McNally said:

"Poor quality expert evidence can lead to unacceptable delays for children and their families.

"By putting standards in place we will ensure only the highest calibre of evidence is permitted in family proceedings.

"We want to ensure that evidence being put forward is more robust and that cases are resolved more quickly. It is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss."

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The article is short on details about how the proposed tightening of requirements for expert testimony will be achieved.
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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan

Dan Kahan on Some Factors Affecting "Objectivity" (and the lack thereof)

Dan Kahan, Motivated reasoning & its cognates (blog post), Cultural Cognition Project  (May 15, 2013):

1.  Generally. Motivated reasoning refers to the unconscious tendency of individuals to process information in a manner that suits some end or goal extrinsic to the formation of accurate beliefs.  ...

[snip, snip]

The end or goal motivates cognition in the sense that it directs mental operations — in this case, sensory perceptions; in others, assessments of the weight and credibility of empirical evidence, or performance of mathematical or logical computation — that we expect to function independently of that goal or end.  Indeed, the normal connotation of “motive” as a conscious goal or reason for acting is actually out of place here.  ...

Although the students in this study [discussed by Kahan] probably would not have been distressed to learn that their perceptions had been covertly recruited by their desire to experience solidarity, there can be other contexts in which motivated cognition subverts an actor’s conscious ends.  This might be so, for example, when a person who genuinely desires to be make a fair or accurate judgment is unwittingly impelled to make a determination that favors some personal interest, pecuniary or social.

2.  Identity-Protective Cognition. The goals or needs that can motivate cognition are diverse.  They include fairly straightforward things, like a person’s financial or related interests.  But they reach more intangible stakes, too, such as one’s need to sustain a positive self-image or the desire to promote states of affairs or other goods that reflect one’s moral values.

Affirming one’s membership in an important reference group ... can encompass all of these ends simultaneously.  Individuals depend on select others — from families to university faculties, from religious denominations to political parties — for all manner of material and emotional support.  Propositions that impugn the character or competence of such groups, or that contradict the groups’ shared commitments, can thus jeopardize their individual members’ well-being.  Assenting to such a proposition him- or herself can sever an individual’s bonds with such a group.  The prospect that people outside the group might credit this proposition can also harm an individual by reducing the social standing or the self-esteem that person enjoys by virtue of his or her group’s reputation.  Individuals thus face psychic pressure to resist propositions of that sort, generating a species of motivated reasoning known as identity-protective cognition.

Identity-protective cognition, like other forms of motivated reasoning, operates through a variety of discrete psychological mechanisms.  Individuals are more likely to seek out information that supports than information that challenges positions associated with their group identity (biased search).  They are also likely selectively to credit or dismiss a form of evidence or argument based on its congeniality to their identity (biased assimilation).  They will tend to impute greater knowledge and trustworthiness and hence assign more credibility to individuals from within their group than from without.

These processes might take the form of rapid, heuristic-driven, even visceral judgments or perceptions, but they can influence more deliberate and reflective forms of judgment as well.  Indeed, far from being immune from identity-protective cognition, individuals who display a greater disposition to use reflective and deliberative (so-called “System 2”) forms of reasoning rather than intuitive, affective ones (“System 1”) can be expected to be even more adept at using technical information and complex analysis to bolster group-congenial beliefs.

3.  Naïve Realism. Identity-protective cognition predictably impedes deliberations, negotiations, and like forms of collective decisionmaking.  When collective decisionmaking turns on facts or other propositions that are understood to bear special significance for the interests, standing, or commitments of opposing groups (for example, those who identify with the respective sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict), identity-protective cognition will predictably exaggerate differences in their understandings of the evidence.  But even more importantly, as a result of a dynamic known as “naïve realism,” each side’s susceptibility to motivated reasoning will interact with and reinforce the other’s.

Naïve realism refers to an asymmetry in the ability of individuals to perceive the impact of identity-protective cognition.  Individuals tend to attribute the beliefs of those who disagree with them to the biasing impact of their opponents’ values.  Often they are right.  In this respect, then, people are psychological “realists.”  Nevertheless, in such situations individuals usually understand their own factual beliefs to reflect nothing more than “objective fact,” plain for anyone to see.  In this regard, they are psychologically naïve about the contribution that group commitments make to their own perceptions.

[snip, snip]

4.  “Objectivity.” As naïve realism presupposes, motivated reasoning is an instance of what we commonly recognize as rationalization.  We exhort others, and even ourselves, to overcome such lapses — to adopt an appropriate stance of detachment — in settings in which we believe impartial judgment is important, including deliberations or negotiations in which vulnerability to self-serving appraisals can interfere with reaching consensus.  What most people don’t know, however, is that such admonitions can actually have a perverse effect because of their interaction with identity-protective cognition.

[snip, snip]

5.  Cultural Cognition. Disputes set in motion by identity-protective cognition and fueled by naïve realism occupy a prominent place in our political life.  Such conflicts are the focus of the study of cultural cognition.

Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their perceptions of risk and other policy-consequential facts to their cultural worldviews.  ...

Methods of cultural cognition have also been used to measure controversy over legally consequential facts.  Thus, mock jury studies have linked identity-protective cognition, motivated by the cultural worldviews, to conflicting perceptions of the risk posed by a motorist fleeing the police in a high-speed chase; of the consent of a date rape victim who said “no” but did not physically resist her assailant; of the volition of battered women who kill in self-defense; and of the use of intimidation by political protestors.  To date, however, no studies have directly tested the impact of cultural cognition on judges.

6.  Cognitive Illiberalism. Finally, cognitive illiberalism refers to the distinctive threat that cultural cognition poses to ideals of cultural pluralism and individual self-determination.  Americans are indeed fighting a “culture war,” but one over facts, not values.

[snip, snip]

As much as they agree about the ends of law, however, citizens are conspicuously — even spectacularly — factionalized over the means of attaining them.  Is the climate heating up as a result of human activity, and if so will it pose any dangers to us?  Will permitting citizens to carry concealed handguns in public increase violent crime — or reduce it?  Would a program of mandatory vaccination of schoolgirls against HPV promote their health by protecting them from cervical cancer — or undermine it by lulling them into unprotected sex, increasing their risk of contracting HIV?  Answers to questions like these tend to sharply polarize people of opposing cultural outlooks.

Divisions along these lines are not due to chance, of course; they are a consequence of identity-protective cognition.  ...

Far from counteracting this effect, deliberation among diverse groups is likely to accentuate polarization.  ...

[snip, snip]

Psychologically, however, the injunction to present culturally neutral empirical grounds for one’s position has the same effect as an “objectivity” admonition.  The prospect that one’s empirical arguments will be shown to be false creates the identity-threatening risk for her that she or others will come to form the belief that her group is deluded and, in fact, committed to propositions inimical to the public welfare.  In addition, the certitude that empirical arguments convey — “it’s simply a fact that . . . ”; “how can they deny the scientific evidence on . . . ?” — arouses suspicions of bad faith or blind partisanship on the part of the groups advancing them.  Yet when members of opposing groups attempt to rebut such arguments, they are likely to respond with the same certitude, and with the same lack of awareness that they are being impelled to credit empirical arguments to protect their identities.  This form of exchange — the signature of naïve realism — predictably generates cycles of recrimination and resentment.

[snip, snip]

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Evidence marshaling software MarshalPlan