Fox Butterfield was a New York Times reporter that wrote several articles in the 1990s expressing total bewilderment about the ‘paradox’ between putting criminals in prison and the subsequent drop in crime. It wasn’t until the year 2000 that Butterfield finally started to acknowledge that locking up the criminals was responsible for the drop in crime in our streets.

James Taranto with The Wall Street Journal invented the term ‘The Butterfield Effect’ for Fox Butterfield and people in general who can’t accept facts or data that run counter to their beliefs. Another term for the ‘Butterfield Effect’ is cognitive dissonance.

Source: The Fox Butterfield Follis, Washington Examiner, 2000. Graphic: Cognitive Dissonance, de Castro, Contemplative Studies, 2020