Why did Duke’s “Group of 88” rush to the wrong conclusions?

Why did the “Group of 88” Duke professors rush to judgment (and the wrong one at that) in the so-called Duke rape case? Michael Barone has interesting thoughts on the subject:

“The ‘Group of 88’ Duke professors, journalists for The New York Times and the Durham Herald-Sun, and heads of black and feminist organizations all seemed to have a powerful emotional need to believe. A need to believe that those they classify as victims must be virtuous and those they classify as oppressors must be villains. A need to believe that this is the way the world usually works. Except it doesn’t.”