Richer insights flow from admitting collective knowledge. We all have our private views and understandings, but we are poorer if we do not take into account the experience of others. In the particular context of the free will discussion running on this thread, Alan's insistence that his choices are free because they feel free requires an ignorance of the findings from many branches of science and in particular cognitive neuroscience that reveal a subtler understanding of the phenomena of conscious mind. In other words he is valuing his own apparent personal experience of life over the collective insights from research.
I think also there is a strong sense of the counter-intuitive about many scientific discoveries. An obvious example is that the earth goes round the sun, since it looks as if it's the reverse, but there are many others. I think the 'contact' one has been mentioned on this thread - that when we sit down, we're not in contact with the chair, since the electrons repel. Another obvious example is the 'design' appearance which natural stuff often has, and which of course led people to assume a designer.
Well, it seems that consciousness is rather similar, since so many decisions occur pre-consciously. Well, appearances are truly deceptive.