Compartmentising conflicting beliefs

In The Mind’s Compartments Create Conflicting Beliefs Michael Shermer looks at "how our modular brains lead us to deny and distort evidence".

If you have pondered how intelligent and educated people can, in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, believe that evolution is a myth, that global warming is a hoax, that vaccines cause autism and asthma, that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration, conjecture no more. The explanation is in what I call logic-tight compartments—modules in the brain analogous to watertight compartments in a ship.