QUOTE : As Kahan explained in Nature, "People find it disconcerting to believe that behavior that they find noble, is nevertheless detrimental to society, and behavior that they find base is beneficial to it. Because accepting such a claim could drive a wedge between them and their peers, they have a strong emotional predisposition to reject it." In other words, it is always easier to deny reality that to watch your worldview get shattered, a fact that was true of die-hard Stalinists at the height of the purges as it is of libertarian climate deniers today.