Do Liberals Have a Tougher Time Changing Their Minds than Conservatives?

The reader who sent me the meme here commented:

Liberals, being the way they are, will never admit they were wrong, no matter how strong the evidence is.

I suppose we all, liberal or conservative, believe that we are more intellectually honest than our counterparts at the other end of the political spectrum.  Yet his statement seems incorrect to me, if only because liberals are people of science, and that means that we’re constantly changing our minds, even on things about which we were previously extremely confident.

My mom and I often have this conversation; she’ll ask me something like: Why is the CDC constantly changing its position on COVID-19? 

To me, the obvious response is that this is what science does as new data is gathered and analyzed, especially in facing an unprecedented challenge like the pandemic.

If you’re looking for validation of what you already believe, which is a distinctly anti-science thing to do, there is always a way to accomplish that, especially with today’s social media.  If you think the Earth is flat, or that Dr. Fauci is “on the take,” or that Trump won the 2020 election, it will take you a matter of just a few seconds to find someone else who shares that belief.

Yet all information sources are not created equal.  In dealing with an epidemic, some people don’t have a problem consulting landscape architects and auto mechanics.  Liberals are more comfortable consulting epidemiologists.  To expect that scientists are wedded to fixed viewpoints is to misunderstand science in its entirety.