Fallacies are so rife with reasons, like we wish them to be so, they become platitudes, or are just intuitively right. Very often they are so habitual that we have little cause to consider they may be untrue. Here then, is a sampling of just a few of the countless "facts" about health, history, nature, and science taken as gospel but with little basis in reality.
Dark side of the moon
There is no dark side to the Moon – sorry, Pink Floyd! NASA instructor Robert Frost says it’s “an expression that people incorrectly use to mean ‘far side of the Moon.’” Because the Moon is in the Earth’s gravitational grip, it always keeps the same face towards us. While the far side is hidden from our point of view, it is still exposed to the Sun during the lunar day.
Mantis fatale
Stories of the female praying mantis decapitating her mate during copulation have solidified her status as the ultimate femme fatale – only the real story’s a little more complicated. Sexual cannibalism occurs in less than one third of all mating occurrences (which, for a male mantis, are pretty long odds). The sex-loving behavior only happens when the female mantis is starved. And, it turns out field studies show that the female will eat the male, or the male can feast on the head prior to, and in the middle of copulating.
Washington’s wooden teeth
If Washington ever truly had wooden teeth-and likely not. People thought they looked wooden because they’re… dirty. “Port wine, being sower [sour], takes off all the polish,” George Washington’s dentist reported back to him, following the arrival of a ‘very black’ set of dentures needing repair. “This new sett in the first night I have put in, had all the polish that ever can be there-or at least that could be from theire mixture of different kinds, composed of animal & human teeth &c.” Yes, of human teeth, enslaved people purchased from George Washington sold years before a lucrative organ trade existed.
The five senses
For almost every child educated after Aristotle, it is dogma that we have five senses. But in fact, five is where the number really began: we have far more sensory systems than those perceiving sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. Our awareness of such fundamental characteristics as temperature (thermoreception), pain (nociception), balance (equilibrioception), bodily posture (proprioception), time (temporal perception) and many internal conditions (interoception), hunger and thirst being but examples, has not been taught to school children since the Lyceum.
The vacuum of space
Space is typically conceived as ... Void. But in reality, space is packed with gas, dust, and radiation. Even if all of it could magically be removed, space-time froths with so-called quantum foam: "virtual" pairs of matter-antimatter particles blink in and out of existence, one of quantum physics' paradoxically charming features. This phenomenon of ephemeral particles leads to the phenomenon of what Stephen Hawking theorized causes a slow evaporation of black holes.
Dropped pennies
The classic urban legend claims that a penny dropped from the height of the Empire State Building would be able to kill a pedestrian walking below. In a vacuum it does not matter, whether it be a penny or even a sheet of paper you can fall to your death at any elevation. The air will prevent a penny falling at speed from anything higher than your elbow from so much as bruising your skin. A more streamlined object, however, would have a very different result.
Cancer-free sharks
Global shark numbers crashed following the myth that people can avoid and cure cancer by consuming shark cartilage (though shark fin soup has not helped). Researchers based the theory on the faulty idea that sharks do not form cancer. They do, they just do it at a low number of incidences. The article then discusses some work showing that sharks’ genomes are relatively unchanged from others of their kind - if we can learn how and why they maintain genomic stability, then maybe we can learn to protect against age-related diseases in humans (like many forms of cancer), but not without sharks going extinct first!
Vaccines and autism
No false belief has proven as lethally enduring as the false connection that was falsely made between autism and MMR vaccines. Driven by hysteria inspired by a dishonest - and then thoroughly debunked - retracted 1998 study, the anti-vax movement has seen deadly diseases that were nearly eradicated from developed nations - like measles, which caused 140,000 deaths globally in 2018 - make comebacks, even crossing the line to sicken a variety of other beneficial vaccines.
FAQ's
1. Do we really only use 10% of our brains?
This is a persistent neurological myth with no basis in science. Neuroimaging studies like fMRI and PET scans show that virtually all areas of the brain are active and utilized over the course of a day, even during sleep or while performing simple tasks. Evolution would never maintain an energy-guzzling organ where 90% goes to waste.
2. Does sugar actually cause hyperactivity in children?
Numerous double-blind, placebo-controlled studies have found no causal link between sugar consumption and hyperactive behavior in kids. The perceived buzz is usually driven by the exciting environments where sugary treats are typically served, such as birthday parties or holidays, alongside confirmation bias from adults who expect children to act wild.
3. Is reading in dim light permanently damaging to your eyes?
Reading in low light does not cause permanent vision loss or structural damage, though it certainly makes your eyes work harder. The strain you feel is simply muscular fatigue from your ciliary muscles struggling to focus in the dark, which resolves completely once you rest or turn on a brighter lamp.
4. Do goldfish actually have a three-second memory?
Goldfish possess surprisingly robust cognitive capabilities and can retain information for months, not seconds. Scientific experiments have demonstrated that they can learn to navigate mazes, distinguish between different shapes and colors, and even remember specific sounds linked to feeding times weeks after being trained.
5. Does shaving your hair make it grow back thicker and darker?
Shaving has zero biological impact on hair follicles beneath the skin's surface, meaning it cannot alter the density, texture, or color of future growth. Hair appears thicker and coarser immediately after shaving simply because the razor cuts the shaft blunt at its thickest base, rather than leaving the naturally tapered tip.
