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So what gives? Why have academics proved to be so remarkably immune to seeing what's happening in the world, despite the fact that the evidence is beating them over the head on a daily basis?

Here's my theory:

The truth hurts.

I don't just mean that in the way that your emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend meant it when she told you her new boyfriend had a bigger dick. Frankly she's a bitch, and probably nothing she says is true, king, so just put whatever she said out of your mind. You're better off without her.

I mean it quite literally: the truth, when it contradicts what you think is true, is interpreted by your brain as more or less the same thing as physical pain. To be more specific, that's probably your left brain talking, since it's your left brain that falls in love with simplified models of reality and readily rejects facts that contradict those models. That just a bit of nuance that doesn't affect the central point, which is that it hurts to accept something that violates a previously held belief.

Learning takes effort at a biological level. The brain has to grow new connections, which means it has to invest time and energy in that rather than in just using the existing pathways. That's hard enough when it's learning something that doesn't contradict previously assimilated information. It's much worse when it contradicts something that is already believed. In that case, the brain has to go back and undo connections that were already made, as well as make the new connections. All that work - for nothing! And the deeper and more fundamental the assumption, the more concepts it connects to, the more beliefs that are built on it which must now be re-examined, the more reluctant the brain is to modify it ... the more painful undoing that assumption is. ...

If you went through it, you know just how wrenching it is, as the awful realization sets in that you were lied to, that you were gullible enough to be deceived, and that you now have to re-examine everything you once believed about the world. To say nothing of the isolation that comes with the knowledge that, with most people, you simply cannot speak of these things.

If you did this, congratulations - you felt the pain of truth, and rather than shying away from it, you moved forward, into the pain. Something inside you understood that the pain was a small price to pay for the truth.

It's much worse when it contradicts something that is already believed. In that case, the brain has to go back and undo connections that were already made, as well as make the new connections.

Patrick says

It's much worse when it contradicts something that is already believed. In that case, the brain has to go back and undo connections that were already made, as well as make the new connections.

That does not seem to be an issue when following a particular cult. For example, Dems had no problem changing from distrust of big corporations and having strong free speech advocacy to becoming Bi Pharma Brown Shirts and censorship advocates just because the Dem party told them to.