Quote John Latter: One area I want to address in a future article is
how cultural conditioning also leads to evidence being disregarded (or
not being seen in its correct context).

This question gets into one of the more interesting aspects of human
decision making. If a group of professionals is given the opportunity
to choose among a set of options- this can include choosing between
competing theories, choosing between competing interpretations of
data, or selecting a stock to recommend, you find many instances where
the group fails or refuses to accept or even consider options that are
clearly and obviously (at least obvious to the professional) superior
to the options actually considered and selected. I call this `When
really smart people make really stupid decisions". This very
interesting phenomena, IMO, provides some really interesting insights
into the operation of goal directed intelligence in both humans and in
evolutionary processes.