Just a brief peek inside the minds of the Sarah Palin supporters. Subject: Death Panels.

Courtesy of The Incidental Economist:  

In this month’s Medical Care there’s a great study by Brendan Nyhan and colleagues: 

Context: Misperceptions are a major problem in debates about health care reform and other controversial health issues.

Methods: We conducted an experiment to determine if more aggressive media fact-checking could correct the false belief that the Affordable Care Act would create “death panels.” Participants from an opt-in Internet panel were randomly assigned to either a control group in which they read an article on Sarah Palin’s claims about “death panels” or an intervention group in which the article also contained corrective information refuting Palin. 

Findings: The correction reduced belief in death panels and strong opposition to the reform bill among those who view Palin unfavorably and those who view her favorably but have low political knowledge. However, it backfired among politically knowledgeable Palin supporters, who were more likely to believe in death panels and to strongly oppose reform if they received the correction. 

Conclusions: These results underscore the difficulty of reducing misperceptions about health care reform among individuals with the motivation and sophistication to reject corrective information.

So in other words those Palin supporters who were paying attention to politics, most likely through the filter of Fox News, were FAR more likely to reject the corrected information about death panels, and suspect that the information was liberally biased, than the people who did not care for Sarah Palin or who did not pay much attention to politics or Fox News.

To put it plainly, if Sarah Palin says it, MUST be true! If one of those atheist scientist guys, or liberal democrats, say it, totally obvious attempt to attack her family and take away our freedoms!!

I think that is a pretty accurate description of the kind of die hard Palin supporter that continues to look for the day when the Grizzled Mama rises from the ashes like a frostbitten phoenix and suddenly becomes relevant in American politics again, or...dare they hope...runs for office.

Pathetic.