Cameron is using what a group of researchers call Motivated reasoning. In motivated reasoning a person starts out with the conclusion they want, then collect evidence to support it.

It's sort of like how most of us buy a car. We go look at cars on the lot, decide which one we like, then spend the next two weeks finding evidence to justify that choice. (Most of us also buy the car that first day on the lot, so we have a big motivation to justify the decision.) Any good car salesman who is honest will confirm this is how we buy cars for the most part.

The problem comes in the data collection stage. Counter evidence to what we believe can cause cognitive dissonance. There's two ways to deal with that cognitive dissonance. First we can change our conclusion to match the new evidence. That becomes very hard to do if you have already bought the car, or are already publicly committed to the original conclusion. If the conclusion is either religious or political ideology and you have been induced to publicly testify to your beliefs, then you are going to look for plan "B".

Plan "B" is to ignore or publicly attack the counter evidence to what you have testified to. The more you do that, then the more you become committed to the original conclusion that you started out to defend.

It's my opinion that this psychological mechanism explains both evangelical religion and the conservative movement. It's an emotionally-driven motivation to avoid, ignore, and even attack evidence that runs counter to what you want to be true. It's also group-oriented. It's a meme that is spread like a virus because of contact with others. It's not based on misinformation or lack of access to true data. It's a socially-driven psychological reason both to avoid or attack the evidence that you find uncomfortable because of the cognitive dissonance it causes and it in fact motivates those who hold the threatened conclusion to go out and try to convert others to hold the same conclusion because that provides comfort and reason to ignore the counter evidence.

Those of us not infected by the meme can see the definition of scientific reasoning and be puzzled that anyone could fail to understand what it means. For those who are infected by the meme, that definition is just another form of counter evidence that threatens what they "know" to be true. Because of the cognitive dissonance it creates, they have to attack science.

Cameron's right, though. Anyone who survives to get a liberal college eduction has to some extent learned to understand the flaws in "Motivated Reasoning." Want to guess why Cameron attacks liberal college education?