As we grow older, these ideas are constantly reinforced by popular culture, our social environments, and even our language and symbolism.
"If you are in academia, you are constantly reinforced for maintaining some level of secrecy," Dan Hartman told me recently, when I visited him at the Gates Foundation, where he leads the team that provides technical support for clinical trials and quantitative research.
The societal norms and concepts are constantly reinforced either at home or in schools, and steer young girls away from STEM capabilities while simultaneously encouraging them in boys.
Instead too many Americans defend the myths their rulers fed them in school and that are constantly reinforced in the corporate media: myths that serve their rulers' interests, not theirs or those of countless innocent people around the globe.
These myths — which are constantly reinforced in movies, television shows and music — aren't just something the general public believes; police, lawyers, judges and jurors have internalized them, and those are the very people responsible for deciding if a case makes it to court and whether the accused goes to prison.
Geographical disparities of this nature are constantly reinforced and aggravated by the movement of health professionals, especially from rural areas to urban centres.
"You have to be constantly reinforcing the message.
It's their own desire, it's parents, it's teachers, and it is constantly reinforcing behavior to develop character.
This message is constantly reinforced by the society in which we live as we grow older.
