I honestly don't think it's stupidity that prevents you from having a good result. I think there are 2 likely causes. First, and most common is an emotional ca

I honestly don't think it's stupidity that prevents you from having a good result. I think there are 2 likely causes. First, and most common is an emotional cause. Falling in love with a theory, settling on it, emotionally, before you even start digging, will make you weight data differently. Extremely smart people will fall pray to this and, again, this is not an intellectual issue, it's an emotional one. I think pursuit of truth is an emotional endeavor as much as it is an intellectual one. The second one is plainly bad data. Here you can arrive very easily even if you are extremely smart and you are emotionally developed to let yourself get out of your way. Getting data is expensive, so a lot of times we avoid gathering it ourselves Bad data will ruin you and taint your conclusion. People closes to practicing something are most capable of surmounting this because they are capable of gathering their own data.