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The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a great number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises ... in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, 1620 (on what is now termed: "confirmation bias")