"A false conclusion once arrived at and widely held is not easily dislodged and the less it is understood, the more tenaciously it is held." - Georg Cantor, mathematician and the developer of the concept of infinity
I think the second part of this is critical. When people have adopted an opinion, be it about how to feed dogs or what political ideology they support, they can become so attached to their viewpoint that they cannot even let go of it long enough to question it. One of my favorite holistic veterinary researchers, Dr. Susan Wynn, says, "Unquestioned answers are more dangerous than unanswered questions," and she's right.
If you find yourself holding an opinion you can't defend, or one that you can't really explain the basis for, there are two possibilities. Either you arrived at it by a process of prejudice and unexamined assumptions, or you arrived at it by an unconscious process of reason and intuition. Take the idea out, give it a good hard shake, maybe take it for a walk on an online email list, forum, or blog comment section, and see how it holds up to scrutiny (yours and others').
Tenacity is a good thing, but only when it's rational. Irrational tenacity is what makes someone say, "My dog is healthy on kibble" when his teeth are covered with tartar and his last four pets died of cancer, and why the neo-cons think we're going to buy that invading Iraq was a really good idea even though the reason why we did it changes like the shifting sands of, well... Arabia.
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