Ignoring, minimizing, or discrediting evidence of harm preemptively disables moral self-censure.

Evidence

When people pursue activities that serve their interests but produce detrimental effects, they avoid facing the harm they cause, or they minimize it. If minimization does not work, they can discredit scientific evidence of harm, generating doubt and controversy despite substantial evidence to the contrary. As long as one ignores, minimizes, or discredits the evidence of the harmful results of one’s conduct, one has few reasons to activate self-censure or any need to change behavioral practices. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2721

Categorization

• XREF: Direct mechanism-level corroboration for the vault’s claims about ordinary people endorsing harmful policy: self-censure is switched off at the evidence stage, before any justification. — connects to: A later denial stage minimizes harm rather than disputing it — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2729
• DEFINE: Specifies how the discrediting of evidence is itself one step in the moral-disengagement mechanism, not merely bad science communication.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2721