It is a rare event indeed when an academic or other public intellectual is intellectually honest and updates his or her priors. Consider the case of Eduardo Galeano, a leading Latin American intellectual. Larry Rother of the NY Times writes:

For more than 40 years, Eduardo Galeano’s The Open Veins of Latin America has been the canonical anti-colonialist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American text in that region. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s populist president, even put a copy of the book … in President Obama’s hands the first time they met. But now Mr. Galeano, a 73-year-old Uruguayan writer, has disavowed the book, saying that he was not qualified to tackle the subject and that it was badly written … “Open Veins tried to be a book of political economy, but I didn’t yet have the necessary training or preparation,” Mr. Galeano said last month while answering questions at a book fair in Brazil, where he was being honored on the 43rd anniversary of the book’s publication. He added: “I wouldn’t be capable of reading this book again; I’d keel over. For me, this prose of the traditional left is extremely leaden, and my physique can’t tolerate it.”

You can read more about the great Eduardo Galeano updating his priors here. How many other intellectuals have ever changed their minds on something so dear to them?

Pick a value-laden theory, any theory.