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TruePath comments on You Be the Jury: Survey on a Current Event - Less Wrong
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Not true. A perfect Bayesian updater will never make worse decisions in the light of new information. If new information causes worse decisions that is a reflection that the new information was not appropriately weighted according to the trustworthiness of the information source.
In other words, false information can only make for worse decisions if it is treated as true. The only reason you would treat false information as true is that you placed too much trust in the source of the information. The problem is not the receipt of the new information, it is incorrect updating due to incorrect priors regarding the reliability of the information source. That may be a common problem for actual imperfect humans but it is not an indication that acquiring new information can ever lead to worse decisions for a theoretical perfect Bayesian updater.
That's not quite right. The provision of all true but biased information (e.g. only those facts that are consistent with guilt) without complete awareness of the exact nature of the bias applied can increase the chances of an error.
Even unbiased info can't be said to always help. A good example is someone who has crazy priors. Suppose someone has the crazy prior that with probability .99999 creationism is true. If they have somehow aquired evidence that overcomes this prior but further information about problems with evolutionary theories would leave them with still strong but not convincing evidence that evolution is true then providing them with that evidence increases their chance of error.
More generally, disagreement in priors forces one to believe that others will make better decisions if evidence that exacerbates the errors in their priors is provided.