While it possible Paul Helmke doesn’t know the literature well enough to have read Dr. Lott’s work, I doubt it.
So, either Helmke has no one at his mental ‘helm’ or he is deliberately lying because he is hired to argue a position.
Hmmmn, could he be a lawyer?
It is called “cognitive dissonance”. It is extremely hard for adults to change their world view. It is even more difficult if you have invested a significant portion of your adult life to promote and extend that particular world view.
The vast majority of people will do all they can, twist logic into pretzels, find any shred of evidence to oppose mountains of data, ignore huge portions of reality, to avoid having to change long held beliefs that they have based their life on.
It can happen. People can have a “road to Damascus” moment; but it usually involves an extremely traumatic, life threatening event that they cannot ignore.
Most simply resort to cognitive dissonance, where they ignore the reality that disproves their world view.