Do data-placement attributes override Twitter Bootstrap popover params?

I'm initializing Bootstrap's popovers like so:

$(".popovers").popover({ container: "body", trigger: "hover", placement: "right" });

On occasion, I want to display a popover in a specific place, so I use a data-placement attribute:

<i class="popovers fa fa-question-circle" data-content="Some popover text." data-placement="left" data-original-title=""></i>

Bootstrap seems to ignore the data-placement attribute and keeps it on the right side of the element.

It seems to me the data-placement attribute should override anything passed to the initialization method. I've scoured the Bootstrap 3 docs and can't find anything that confirms or denies this.

Is the data-placement attribute ignored in this case, or am I missing something?