I heard the explanation “conservatives stop thinking if they like the current result”.

If immigrants committed any crime, the obvious solution is to deport all of them. Less immigrants, less crime, sounds great, no further research needed.

But if it’s about something like social security, they go to the ninth layer of indirection to “prove” that it’s bad, because now they found a study that slightly agrees with one of their talking points (p ≈ room temperature).