The biggest mistake I see people make over and over is to decide what they believe in advance and then search for evidence that supports that. Rational thought is the exact opposite: with an open mind, you seek out evidence, and then you let that evidence lead you to a logical conclusion.

The whole notion of the gender pay gap would have been GONE years ago if people would just take the "evidence leads me" approach. But it's not just feminists who use "conclusion first" thought. I see people on both the right and the left, or really from any political persuasion, go with "conclusion first."

It's very frustrating because it leads to millions of people who are 100 percent certain they're right when they're not. It's the same reason the Catholic Church was ready to torture Galileo for refusing to support their totally wrong geocentric model of the universe.

Study after study, and article after article, shows that the earnings differences between men and women are due to different choices made and not by any gender bias, but the pay gap nonsense persists. It's actually been illegal since 1963 (in the USA) to pay women less for the same work.

What I find most frustrating is that even questioning the pay gap is considered misogyny. There is no idea on this Earth that is except from scrutiny. Nothing should be exempt. Whole wars have been fought over the belief that the God myth should be exempt. And I feel almost like it would start a war if I posted the link to one of the articles debunking the gender pay gap on my Facebook page. There's nothing at all hateful about questioning an idea. Even if the pay gap rebuttals were somehow wrong, those rebuttals are still not the same thing as hate.

It's frustrating. It's rare to meet a person who goes evidence first. But it's what everyone should do.