The more fans know about Deflategate, the more they disagree

What he said. Jim Davis / The Boston Globe

By Eric Levenson @ejleven

October 15, 2015

1 minute to read

A New York Times survey found that knowing more about Deflategate makes people disagree even more on Brady’s guilt.

Among Patriots fans who correctly answered three questions about Deflategate, just 10 percent thought Brady was guilty. At the same time, fans of other teams who correctly answered those questions believed Brady was guilty 65 percent of the time. For Patriots fans, knowing more only made people’s opinion of Brady’s innocence more certain.

It might seem counter-intuitive that people who know more would have starkly different views. Yet in sports as in politics, researchers have found that facts don’t fix misinformation, but actually strengthen incorrect views.

The survey also found that those who believe the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and that Obama was born in Kenya are more likely to believe Deflategate-related conspiracies.

The Times survey asked respondents if the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11, if Obama was born in America, as well as two Deflategate conspiracies. One was a pro-Tom Brady conspiracy, saying that the NFL punished the quarterback to distract from the league’s problems. The other claim was an anti-Brady conspiracy, that a federal judge’s decision to lift Brady’s four-game suspension was influenced by the fame and wealth of Brady and the Patriots.

There was a strong correlation in the responses to these claims. Of those who rejected birther and 9/11 truther claims, 44 percent believed each of the Brady conspiracies. But of those who believed the birther and 9/11 conspiracies, belief increased to 59 percent for the pro-Brady theory and 65 percent for the anti-Brady theory.

Once you believe in one conspiracy theory, others become more believable.

In all, about two-thirds of survey respondents said they thought Brady broke the rules. Those opinions largely stuck with the respondents’ team of choice. Just 16 percent of Pats fans thought Brady broke the rules, compared to 90 percent of Colts fans.