List of common misconceptions

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This is a list of common misconceptions. Each entry is worded as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than stated. These entries are concise summaries of the main subject articles, which can be consulted for more detail.

Arts and culture

Food and cooking

• Searing does not seal moisture in meat; in fact, it causes it to lose some moisture. Meat is seared to brown it, improving its color and flavor.
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG) does not trigger migraine headaches or other symptoms of so-called Chinese restaurant syndrome, nor is there evidence that some individuals are especially sensitive to MSG.
• Twinkies (a brand of American snack cakes) have a shelf life of approximately 45 days (25 in their original formulation)—far shorter than the common (and somewhat jocular) myth that Twinkies are edible for decades or longer. They generally remain on a store shelf for only 7 to 10 days.
• There are no known cases of children having been killed or seriously injured by poisoned candy or fruit given to them by strangers at Halloween or any other time, though there are cases where people have poisoned their own children.
• Most food is edible long after its expiration date, with the exception of some perishables.
• Seeds are not the spicy part of chili peppers. In fact, seeds contain a low amount of capsaicin, the component which induces the hot sensation in mammals. The highest concentration of capsaicin is located in the placental tissue (the pith) to which the seeds are attached.
• Turkey meat is not particularly high in tryptophan, and does not cause more drowsiness than other foods.
• Rice does not cause birds to die by inflating their stomachs until they burst. Birds do eat wild rice, though some species avoid it. This common misconception has often led to weddings using millet, confetti, or other materials to shower the newlyweds as they leave the ceremony, instead of traditionally throwing rice.

Food history

Fortune cookies are associated with Chinese cuisine, but were actually invented in Japan, and are almost never eaten in China, where they are seen as American.

• Fortune cookies are not found in Chinese cuisine, despite their ubiquity in Chinese restaurants in the United States. They were invented in Japan and introduced to the US by the Japanese. In China, they are considered American, and are rare.
• Spices were not used to mask the flavor of rotting meat before refrigeration. Spices were an expensive luxury item; those who could afford them could afford good meat, and there are no contemporaneous documents calling for spices to disguise the taste of bad meat.
• Steak tartare was not invented by Mongol warriors who tenderized meat under their saddles.
• Whipped cream was not invented by François Vatel at the Château de Chantilly in 1671; the recipe is attested at least a century earlier in Italy, but the name crème chantilly only in the 19th century.
• Catherine de' Medici and her entourage did not introduce Italian foods to the French royal court and thus create French haute cuisine.

Microwave ovens

• Microwave ovens do not heat food by operating at a special resonance of water molecules in the food but by dielectric heating. Dielectric heating causes sympathetic movement in polar molecules, like water.
• Microwave ovens do not cook food from the inside out. 2.45 GHz microwaves can only penetrate approximately 1 centimeter (3⁄8 inch) into most foods. The inside portions of thicker foods are mainly heated by heat conducted from the outer portions.
• Microwave ovens cannot cause cancer, as microwave radiation is non-ionizing, and therefore does not have the cancer risks associated with ionizing radiation such as X-rays. No studies have found that microwave radiation causes cancer, even with exposure levels far greater than normal radiation leakage.
• Looking into a microwave oven does not damage the eyes. Any heat or radiation that could harm the eyes is contained within the oven.

Law, crime, and military

Violent crime rates in the United States declined significantly between 1994 and 2003

• It is rarely necessary to wait 24 hours before filing a missing person report. When there is evidence of violence or of an unusual absence, it is important to start an investigation promptly. The UK government advises "You do not have to wait 24 hours before contacting the police."
• Twinkies were not claimed to be the cause of San Francisco mayor George Moscone's and supervisor Harvey Milk's murders. In the trial of Dan White, the defense successfully argued White's diminished capacity as a result of severe depression. While eating Twinkies was cited as evidence of this depression, it was never claimed to be the cause of the murders.
• The US Armed Forces have generally forbidden military enlistment as a form of deferred adjudication (that is, an option for convicts to avoid jail time) since the 1980s. US Navy protocols discourage the practice, while the other four branches have specific regulations against it.
• Legal tender laws in the United States do not state that a private business, a person, or an organization must accept cash for payment, though it must be regarded as valid payment for debts tendered to a creditor.
• The United States does not require police officers to identify themselves as police in the case of a sting or other undercover work, and police officers may lie when engaged in such work. Claiming entrapment as a defense instead focuses on whether the defendant was induced by undue pressure (such as threats) or deception from law enforcement to commit crimes they would not have otherwise committed.
• Violent crime in the United States decreased between 1993 and 2017. The violent crime rate fell 49% in that period, and the number of gun homicides has decreased.
• The First Amendment to the United States Constitution generally only prevents government restrictions on the freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, or petition, not restrictions imposed by private individuals or businesses unless they are acting on behalf of the government. Other laws may restrict the ability of private businesses and individuals to restrict the speech of others.
• Neither the Mafia nor other criminal organizations regularly use cemented shoes to drown their victims. This method is more often used to submerge (already) dead bodies. However, there are at least two cases of the tactic being used: one in 2016 and the other in 1964.
• In the United States, a defendant may not have their case dismissed simply because they were not read their Miranda rights at the time of their arrest. Miranda warnings cover the rights of a person when they are taken into custody and then interrogated by law enforcement. If a person is not given a Miranda warning before the interrogation is conducted, statements made by them during the interrogation may not be admissible in a trial. The prosecution may still present other forms of evidence, or statements made during interrogations where the defendant was read their Miranda rights, to get a conviction.

Literature

Main article: Wikiquote:Misquotations

• Many quotations are incorrect or attributed to people who never uttered them, and quotations from obscure or unknown authors are often attributed to more famous figures. Commonly misquoted individuals include Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, William Shakespeare, and the Buddha.
• Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein is named after the scientist, Victor Frankenstein, who created the sapient creature in the novel, not the creature itself, which is never named and is called Frankenstein's monster. However, as later adaptations started to refer to the monster itself as Frankenstein, this usage became well-established and some do not consider it erroneous any more.

Music

See also: Mondegreen § In songs

• Absolute or "perfect" pitch is far more common than the oft-cited 1 in 10,000 people. Its prevalence has been estimated at as high as 1 in 25 people.

Classical music

• The melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", the "Alphabet Song", and "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" was not composed by Mozart when he was 5 years old; it was already a popular French folk song when he composed a series of variations on the tune, when he was 25 or 26.
• Mozart was not Austrian. During his life, Salzburg was not part of the Archduchy of Austria, but an essentially sovereign state called the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg within the Bavarian Circle of the Holy Roman Empire. It was only in 1805, 14 years after his death, that Salzburg was annexed to the Austrian Empire.
• Mozart did not die from poisoning, and was not poisoned by his colleague Antonio Salieri or anyone else. The false rumor originated soon after Salieri's death, and was dramatized in Alexander Pushkin's play Mozart and Salieri. The 1984 film Amadeus also suggested Salieri's involvement in Mozart's death, but he was not shown to use poison.
• The minuet in G major by Christian Petzold is commonly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach, although the piece was identified in the 1970s as a movement from a harpsichord suite by Petzold. The misconception stems from Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach, a book of sheet music by various composers (mostly Bach) in which the minuet is found. Compositions that are doubtful as works of Bach are catalogued as "BWV Anh.", short for "Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis Anhang" ("Bach works catalogue annex"); the minuet is assigned to BWV Anh. 114.
• The "Minute Waltz" takes, on average, two minutes to play as originally written. Its name comes from the adjective minute, meaning 'small', and not the noun spelled the same.

Popular music

• "Edelweiss" is not the national anthem of Austria, but an original composition created for the musical The Sound of Music. The Austrian national anthem is "Land der Berge, Land am Strome" ("Land of the Mountains, Land on the River"). The edelweiss is also Austria's state flower.
• The Beach Boys were not always replaced by session musicians on the backing tracks for their early studio recordings. The band members played on virtually all of their hits from the early 1960s.
• The Beatles' 1965 appearance at Shea Stadium was not the first time that a rock concert was played at a large, outdoor sports stadium in the U.S. Such venues were employed by Elvis Presley in the 1950s and the Beatles themselves in 1964.
• The Beatles were not the first to experiment with sounds processed through a Leslie speaker.
• The Rolling Stones were not performing "Sympathy for the Devil" at the 1969 Altamont Free Concert when Meredith Hunter was stabbed to death by a member of the local Hells Angels chapter that was serving as security. While the incident that culminated in Hunter's death began while the band was performing the song, prompting a brief interruption before the Stones finished it, it concluded several songs later as the band was performing "Under My Thumb". The misconception arose from mistaken reporting in Rolling Stone.
• Phil Collins did not sing his 1981 hit "In the Air Tonight" about witnessing someone drowning and then confronting the person in the audience who let it happen. According to Collins himself, it was about his emotions when divorcing from his first wife.
• "Don't Worry, Be Happy", written and sung by Bobby McFerrin, is commonly believed to be sung by the reggae musician Bob Marley, but the song was written seven years after Marley died. "Three Little Birds," which Marley did write, includes a similar line: "don't worry about a thing, every little thing's gonna be all right."

Film and television

• Actor Ronald Reagan was never seriously considered for the role of Rick Blaine in the 1942 film classic Casablanca, eventually played by Humphrey Bogart. This belief came from an early studio press release announcing the film's production that used his name to generate interest in the film. But by the time it had come out, Warner Bros. knew that Reagan was unavailable for any roles in the foreseeable future since he was no longer able to defer his entry into military service. Studio records show that producer Hal B. Wallis had always wanted Bogart for the part.
• Jane Russell never wore a special bra designed by director Howard Hughes during filming of The Outlaw. She said the "ridiculous" contraption hurt so much "I never wore it in The Outlaw, and he never knew. He wasn't going to take my clothes off to check if I had it on. I just told him I did."
• Contrary to popular opinion, Divine was not transgender, never identified as female and never wore women's clothing in day to day life.

Religion

• Not all religions teach that there is a god or gods in the Western sense. For example, Buddhism and Jainism do not have a creator god and Unitarian Universalism has no creed at all.

Christianity

• Jesus was most likely not born on any date corresponding to December 25, the date on which his birth is traditionally celebrated as Christmas. It is more likely that his birth was in either the season of spring or perhaps summer, while December 25 in the Northern Hemisphere is at the beginning of winter. Also, although the Common Era ostensibly counts the years since his birth, it is unlikely that he was born in either AD 1 or 1 BC, as such a numbering system would imply. Modern historians estimate a date closer to between 6 BC and 4 BC.
• The Bible does not say that exactly three magi came to visit the baby Jesus, nor that they were kings, or rode on camels, or that their names were Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar, nor what color their skin was. Three magi are inferred because three gifts are described, but the Bible says only that there was more than one; still, artistic depictions of the nativity have almost always depicted three magi since the 3rd century. The Bible only specifies an upper limit of 2 years for the interval between the birth and the visit (Matthew 2:16), and artistic depictions and the closeness of the traditional dates of December 25 and January 6 encourage the popular assumption that the visit took place in the same season as the birth, but later traditions varied, with the visit taken as occurring up to two years later. The association of magi with kings comes from efforts to tie the visit to prophecies in the Book of Isaiah.

No Biblical or historical evidence supports Mary Magdalene having been a prostitute.

• The idea that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute before she met Jesus is not found in the Bible or in any of the other earliest Christian writings. The misconception likely arose due to a conflation between Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany (who anoints Jesus's feet in John 11:1–12), and the unnamed "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet in Luke 7:36–50.
• Paul the Apostle did not change his name from Saul. He was born a Jew, with Roman citizenship inherited from his father, and thus carried both a Hebrew and a Greco-Roman name from birth. Luke indicates the coexistence of the names in Acts 13:9: "...Saul, who also is called Paul...".
• The Roman Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception does not state that Jesus or his mother Mary was born to a virgin. Rather, it states that Mary was not in a state of original sin from the moment of her own conception.
• Roman Catholic dogma does not say that the pope is either sinless or always infallible. Catholic dogma since 1870 does state that a dogmatic teaching contained in divine revelation that is promulgated by the pope (deliberately, and under certain very specific circumstances; generally called ex cathedra) is free from error, although official invocation of papal infallibility is rare. While most theologians state that canonizations meet the requisites, aside from that, most recent popes have finished their reign without a single invocation of infallibility. Otherwise, even when speaking in his official capacity, dogma does not hold that he is free from error.
• St. Peter's Basilica is not the mother church of Roman Catholicism, nor is it the official seat of the Pope. These equivalent distinctions belong to the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, which is located in Rome outside of Vatican City but over which the Vatican has extraterritorial jurisdiction. This also means that St. Peter's is not a cathedral in the literal sense of that word. St. Peter's is, however, used as the principal church for many papal functions.
• Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) no longer practice polygamy. Currently, the LDS Church excommunicates any members who practice polygamy within the organization. However, some Mormon fundamentalist sects still practice polygamy within their groups. For more details on this subject, see Mormonism and polygamy.
• Saint Augustine did not say "God created hell for inquisitive people". He actually said: "I do not give the answer that someone is said to have given (evading by a joke the force of the objection), 'He was preparing hell for those who pry into such deep subjects.' … I do not answer in this way. I would rather respond, 'I do not know,' concerning what I do not know than say something for which a man inquiring about such profound matters is laughed at, while the one giving a false answer is praised." So Augustine is saying that he would not say this and that he does not know the answer to the question.

Islam

Afghan women wearing burqas

• Most Muslim women do not wear a burqa (also transliterated as burka or burkha), which covers the body, head, and face, with a mesh grille to see through. Many Muslim women, though not all, do cover their hair with a hijab, or their hair and face (excluding the eyes) with a niqab.
• A fatwā is a non-binding legal opinion issued by an Islamic scholar under Islamic law; it is therefore commonplace for fatwā from different authors to disagree. The popular misconception that the word means a death sentence probably stems from the fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran in 1989 regarding the author Salman Rushdie, who he stated had earned a death sentence for blasphemy. This event led to fatwā gaining widespread media attention in the West.
• The word "jihad" does not always mean "holy war"; literally, the word in Arabic means "struggle". While there is such a thing as "jihad bil saif", or jihad "by the sword", many modern Islamic scholars usually say that it implies an effort or struggle of a spiritual kind. Scholar Louay Safi asserts that "misconceptions and misunderstandings regarding the nature of war and peace in Islam are widespread in both the Muslim societies and the West", as much following 9/11 as before.
• The Quran does not promise martyrs 72 virgins in heaven. It does mention companions, houri, to all people—martyr or not—in heaven, but no number is specified. The source for the 72 virgins is a hadith in Sunan al-Tirmidhi by Imam Tirmidhi. Hadiths are sayings and acts of the prophet Muhammad as reported by others, and as such they are not part of the Quran itself. Muslims are not meant to necessarily believe all hadiths, and that applies particularly to those hadiths that are weakly sourced, such as this one. Furthermore, the correct translation of this particular hadith is a matter of debate.

Judaism

Often shown as an apple in art, the fruit in the Garden of Eden is not named in Genesis.

• The forbidden fruit mentioned in the Book of Genesis is never identified as an apple, a misconception widely depicted in Western art. The original Hebrew texts mention only tree and fruit. Early Latin translations use the word mali, which can mean either "evil" or "apple". In early Germanic languages the word apple and its cognates usually simply meant "fruit". German and French artists commonly depict the fruit as an apple from the 12th century onwards, and John Milton's Areopagitica from 1644 explicitly mentions the fruit as an apple. Jewish scholars have suggested that the fruit could have been a grape, a fig, an apricot, or an etrog.
• While they are forbidden by the Book of Leviticus, having tattoos does not mean someone cannot be buried in a Jewish cemetery as is commonly believed, just as violating any other prohibition does not prevent a Jew from ultimately being buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Other religions

• The historical Buddha is not known to have been fat. The chubby monk known as the "fat Buddha" or "laughing Buddha" in the West is a 10th-century Chinese Buddhist folk hero by the name of Budai.
• Although the Baháʼí Faith teaches the divine origins of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and some other religions, it is not a composite of those other religions nor does it hold that they are equally valid today. Its teaching of progressive revelation holds that the previous religions are stages in the development of humanity.

Sports

Marcos Torregrosa wearing the BJJ black belt with a red bar indicating first degree

• Abner Doubleday did not invent baseball, nor did it originate in Cooperstown, New York. It is believed to have evolved from other bat-and-ball games such as cricket and rounders and first took its modern form in New York City.
• The black belt in martial arts does not necessarily indicate expert level or mastery. It was introduced for judo in the 1880s to indicate competency at all of the basic techniques of the sport. Promotion beyond 1st dan (the first black belt rank) varies among different martial arts. In judo and derived martial arts such as Brazilian jiu-jitsu, holders of higher master ranks are awarded alternating red and white panels, and the highest grandmasters wear solid red belts. Other arts such as taekwondo use black belts with a number of gold bars to indicate the holder's dan rank.
• The use of triangular corner flags in English football is not a privilege reserved for those teams that have won an FA Cup in the past, despite a wide belief to the contrary that inspired a scene in the film Twin Town. The Football Association's rules are silent on the subject, and often the decision over what shape flag to use has been up to the individual club's groundskeepers.
• India did not withdraw from the 1950 FIFA World Cup because their squad played barefoot, which was against FIFA regulations. In reality, India withdrew because the country's managing body, the All India Football Federation (AIFF), was insufficiently prepared for the team's participation and gave various reasons for withdrawing, including a lack of funding and prioritizing the Olympics. However, the myth frequently resurfaces in both India and abroad as fact (especially come World Cup time). The AIFF itself may have been the source of this myth.

Language

See also: List of common misconceptions about language learning

• The pronunciation of coronal fricatives in Spanish did not arise through imitation of a lisping king. Only one Spanish king, Peter of Castile, is documented as having a lisp, and the current pronunciation originated two centuries after his death.
• The Chevrolet Nova sold very well in Latin American markets; General Motors did not need to rename the car. While no va does mean 'it doesn't go' in Spanish, nova was easily understood to mean "new".
• Sign languages are not the same worldwide. Aside from the pidgin International Sign, each country generally has its own native sign language, and some have more than one (although there are also substantial similarities among all sign languages).
• Eskimo tribes, such as the Inuit and Aleut, do not have a disproportionate number of words representing snow in their languages. The myth comes from a misconstruction of Franz Boas's original statement noting that Eskimos had a variety of words for various snow-related concepts; Boas noted that the same was true of English.
• The Hopi people do in fact have a concept of time, and the Hopi language does have ways of expressing temporal concepts, though they are organized differently from those in Western languages.
• The Chinese word for "crisis" (危机) is not composed of the symbols for "danger" and "opportunity;" the first does represent danger, but the second instead means "inflection point" (the original meaning of the word "crisis"). The myth was perpetuated mainly by a campaign speech from John F. Kennedy.

English language

Main articles: List of common false etymologies and Common English usage misconceptions

"Xmas", along with a modern Santa Claus, used on a Christmas postcard (1910)

• Nonstandard, slang, or colloquial terms used by English speakers are sometimes alleged not to be real words, despite appearing in numerous dictionaries. All words in English became accepted by being commonly used for a certain period of time; thus, there are many vernacular words currently not accepted as part of the standard language, or regarded as inappropriate in formal speech or writing, but the idea that they are somehow not words is a misconception. Examples of words that are sometimes alleged not to be words include "irregardless", "conversate", "funnest", "mentee", "impactful", and "thusly", all of which appear in numerous dictionaries as English words.
• The word "the" was never pronounced or spelled "ye" in Old or Middle English. The confusion, seen in the common stock phrase "ye olde," derives from the use of the character thorn (þ), which in Middle English represented the sound now represented in Modern English by "th." In blackletter, þ and y were difficult to distinguish, meaning that "þe" () very closely resembled "ye."
• African American Vernacular English speakers do not simply replace "is" with "be" across all tenses, with no added meaning. In fact, AAVE speakers use "be" to mark a habitual grammatical aspect not explicitly distinguished in Standard English.
• Easter is in no way connected to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, who in turn had no connection to eggs. The name Easter, used only in Germanic languages (Romance languages use variants of Pascha), derives from the West Germanic goddess Ēostre, who represents the dawn. Easter eggs draw upon ancient use of the egg as a symbol of rebirth and resurrection, in this case symbolizing the Resurrection of Jesus. The false etymology associating Easter with Ishtar originated in an 1853 anti-Catholic pamphlet, The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop, which has been thoroughly debunked.
• The word "fuck" did not originate in Christianized Anglo-Saxon England (7th century CE) as an acronym for "fornication under consent of king"; nor did it originate as an acronym for "for unlawful carnal knowledge", either as a sign posted above adulterers in the stocks, or as a criminal charge against members of the British Armed Forces; nor did it originate during the 15th-century Battle of Agincourt as a corruption of "pluck yew" (an idiom falsely attributed to the English for drawing a longbow). Modern English was not spoken until the 16th century, and words such as "fornication" and "consent" did not exist in any form in English until the influence of Anglo-Norman in the late 12th century. The earliest certain recorded use of "fuck" in English comes from c. 1475, in the poem "Flen flyys", where it is spelled fuccant (conjugated as if a Latin verb meaning "they fuck"). It is of Proto-Germanic origin, and is related to either Dutch fokken, German ficken, and Norwegian fukka.
• The word "crap" did not originate as a back-formation of British plumber Thomas Crapper's surname, nor does his name originate from the word "crap", although the surname may have helped popularize the word. The surname "Crapper" is a variant of "Cropper", which originally referred to someone who harvested crops. The word "crap" ultimately comes from Medieval Latin crappa, meaning "chaff".
• The expression "rule of thumb" did not originate from a law allowing a man to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb, and there is no evidence that such a law ever existed. The true origin of this phrase remains uncertain, but the false etymology has been broadly reported in media including The Washington Post (1989), CNN (1993), and Time magazine (1983).
• The word "gringo" as a term for someone foreign to Latin America did not originate during the Mexican–American War (1846–48), the Venezuelan War of Independence (1811–23), the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), or from the American Old West (c. 1865–99) as a corruption of the English lyrics "green grow" in either "Green Grow the Lilacs" (Irish folk song) or "Green Grow the Rushes, O" (English folk song), as sung by US soldiers or cowboys; nor did it originate during any of these times as a corruption of "Green, go home!", falsely said to have been shouted at green-clad American troops. The word originally simply meant 'foreigner', and is probably a corruption of the Spanish word griego for 'Greek' (along the lines of the idiom "It's Greek to me").
• The anti-Italian slur wop did not originate from an acronym for "without papers" or "without passport", as is widely believed; it is actually derived from the term guappo (roughly meaning thug or "dandy"), from Spanish guapo. The term was in use by 1908, predating modern immigration laws.
• Wetback, an ethnic slur for Mexican immigrants coming into the US, has nothing to do with sweaty farm labor, or any other activity post-migration, but rather refers solely to the consequences of the supposed method of immigration, crossing the Rio Grande river, which would result in a wet back.
• "420" did not originate from the Los Angeles police or penal code for marijuana use. In California, Police Code 420 means "juvenile disturbance", and California Penal Code section 420 prohibits the obstruction of access to public land. The use of "420" started in 1971 at San Rafael High School, where it indicated the time, 4:20 pm, when a group of students would go to smoke.
• "Xmas" did not originate as a secular plan to "take the Christ out of Christmas". X stands for the Greek letter chi, the starting letter of Χριστός (Christós), "Christ" in Greek. The use of the word "Xmas" in English can be traced to the year 1021, when monks in Great Britain used the X in place of "Christ" for abbreviation, while transcribing classical manuscripts into Old English. The Oxford English Dictionary's "first recorded use of 'Xmas' for 'Christmas' dates to 1551."

History

Ancient

Ancient Greek sculptures were originally painted bright colors.

• Ancient Greek and Roman sculptures were originally painted bright colors; they only appear white today because the original pigments have deteriorated. Some well-preserved statues still bear traces of their original coloration.
• Tutankhamun's tomb is not inscribed with a curse on those who disturb it. This was a media invention of 20th-century tabloid journalists.
• The ancient Greeks did not use the word "idiot" (Template:Lang-grc ) to disparage people who did not take part in civic life or who did not vote. An ἰδιώτης was simply a private citizen as opposed to a government official. Later, the word came to mean any sort of non-expert or layman, then someone uneducated or ignorant, and much later to mean stupid or mentally deficient.

There is no evidence of using Roman salute by ancient Romans as depicted in the painting The Oath of the Horatii (1784)

• There is no evidence that the Roman salute, in which the arm is fully extended forwards or diagonally with fingers touching, was actually used in ancient Rome for greeting or any other purpose. The idea that the salute was popular in ancient times originated in the 1784 painting Oath of the Horatii by the French artist Jacques-Louis David, which inspired later salutes, most notably the Nazi salute.

Vomitorium to a Roman amphitheater in Toulouse

• Vomiting was not a regular part of Roman dining customs. In ancient Rome, the architectural feature called a vomitorium was the entranceway through which crowds entered and exited a stadium, not a special room used for purging food during meals.
• The Roman dictator Julius Caesar was not born via caesarean section. Such a procedure would have been fatal to the mother at the time, and historical evidence indicates Caesar's mother being alive during his own lifetime. Although the names are similar, the caesarean section was not named after Caesar, as is commonly believed; it is more likely derived from the Roman verb caedere, meaning "to cut."
• The death of the Greek philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria at the hands of a mob of Christian monks in 415 was mainly a result of her involvement in a bitter political feud between her close friend and student Orestes, the Roman prefect of Alexandria, and the bishop Cyril, not her religious views. Her death also had nothing to do with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, which had likely already ceased to exist centuries before Hypatia was born.
• Scipio Aemilianus did not plow over the city of Carthage and sow it with salt after defeating it in the Third Punic War.

Middle Ages

See also: List of common misconceptions about the Middle Ages

• The Middle Ages were not "a time of ignorance, barbarism and superstition"; the Church did not place religious authority over personal experience and rational activity; and the term "Dark Ages" is rejected by modern historians.
• While modern life expectancies are much higher than those in the Middle Ages and earlier, adults in the Middle Ages did not die in their 30s or 40s on average. That was the life expectancy at birth, which was skewed by high infant and adolescent mortality. The life expectancy among adults was much higher; a 21-year-old man in medieval England, for example, could expect to live to the age of 64.
• There is no evidence that Vikings wore horns on their helmets; this would have been highly impractical in battle. In fact, the image of Vikings wearing horned helmets stems from the scenography of an 1876 production of the Der Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle by Richard Wagner.
• Vikings did not drink out of the skulls of vanquished enemies. This was based on a mistranslation of the skaldic poetic use of ór bjúgviðum hausa (branches of skulls) to refer to drinking horns.
• Vikings did not name Iceland "Iceland" as a ploy to discourage others from settling it. Naddodd and Hrafna-Flóki Vilgerðarson both saw snow and ice on the island when they traveled there, giving the island its name. Greenland, on the other hand, was named in the hope that it would help attract settlers.
• King Canute did not command the tide to reverse in a fit of delusional arrogance. His intent that day, if indeed the incident did occur, was most likely to prove a point to members of his privy council that no man is all-powerful, and we all must bend to forces beyond our control, such as the tides.
• There is no evidence that iron maidens were used for torture, or even yet invented, in the Middle Ages. Instead they were pieced together in the 18th century from several artifacts found in museums to create spectacular objects intended for (commercial) exhibition.

An anti-clockwise spiral staircase at Hohenzollern Castle in Germany. The choice of anticlockwise or clockwise spiral in castles had more to do with convenience than with hindering right-handed attackers.

• Spiral staircases in castles were not designed in a clockwise direction to hinder right-handed attackers. While clockwise spiral staircases are more common in castles than anti-clockwise, they were even more common in medieval structures without a military role such as religious buildings.
• The plate armor of European soldiers did not stop soldiers from moving around or necessitate a crane to get them into a saddle. They would routinely fight on foot and could mount and dismount without help. In fact, soldiers equipped with plate armor were more mobile than those with mail armor (chain armor), as mail was heavier and required stiff padding beneath due to its pliable nature. It is true that armor used in tournaments in the late Middle Ages was significantly heavier than that used in warfare, which may have contributed to this misconception.
• Whether chastity belts, devices designed to prevent women from having sexual intercourse, were invented in medieval times is disputed by modern historians. Most existing chastity belts are now thought to be deliberate fakes or anti-masturbatory devices from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Medieval depiction of a spherical Earth.

• Medieval Europeans did not believe Earth was flat. Scholars have known the Earth is spherical since at least 500 B.C. This myth was created in the 17th century by Protestants to argue against Catholic teachings.

• Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth, but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference because of two calculation errors. He and all of his crew would have died of starvation, thirst, or scurvy had they not inadvertently reached Caribbean islands off the coast of North America. The myth that Columbus proved the Earth was round was propagated by authors like Washington Irving in A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus.

• Christopher Columbus was not the first European to visit the Americas: Leif Erikson, and possibly other Vikings before him, explored Vinland, which was either the island of Newfoundland, part of modern Canada, or a term for Newfoundland and parts of the North American mainland. Ruins at L'Anse aux Meadows prove that at least one Norse settlement was built in Newfoundland, confirming a narrative in the Saga of Erik the Red. Columbus also never reached any land that now forms part of the mainland United States of America; most of the landings Columbus made on his four voyages, including the initial October 12, 1492 landing (the anniversary of which forms the basis of Columbus Day), were on Caribbean islands that are now independent countries. However, Columbus did land on the mainland of South America during his third voyage to the Americas (1498–1500).

Early modern

• The Mexica people of the Aztec Empire did not mistake Hernán Cortés and his landing party for gods during Cortés' conquest of the empire. This myth came from Francisco López de Gómara, who never went to Mexico and conjured the myth while working for the retired Cortés in Spain years after the conquest.
• Marco Polo did not import pasta from China, a misconception that originated with the Macaroni Journal, published by an association of food industries to promote the use of pasta in the United States. Marco Polo describes a food similar to "lasagna" in his Travels, but he uses a term with which he was already familiar.
• Contrary to the popular image of the Pilgrim Fathers, the early settlers of the Plymouth Colony in North America usually did not wear all black, and their capotains (hats) were shorter and rounder than the widely depicted tall hat with a buckle on it. Instead, their fashion was based on that of the late Elizabethan era: doublets, jerkins and ruffs. Both men and women wore the same style of shoes, stockings, capes, coats and hats in a range of colors including reds, yellows, purples, and greens. The traditional image was formed in the 19th century when buckles were a kind of emblem of quaintness. (The Puritans, who also settled in Massachusetts near the same time, did frequently wear all black.)
• There is little evidence to support that the Italian mathematician, physicist, and philosopher Galileo Galilei uttered "e pur si muove" or "eppur si muove" (and yet it moves) in 1633 after being forced by the Catholic Church to abandon his heliocentric theory in favor of the geocentric theory as adopted by the Church.
• The familiar story that Isaac Newton was inspired to research the nature of gravity by an apple hitting his head is almost certainly apocryphal. All Newton himself ever said was that the idea came to him as he sat "in a contemplative mood" and "was occasioned by the fall of an apple".
• The accused at the Salem witch trials in North America were not burned at the stake; about 15 died in prison, 19 were hanged and one was pressed to death.

The phrase "let them eat cake" is commonly attributed to Marie Antoinette.

• Marie Antoinette did not say "let them eat cake (brioche)" when she heard that the French peasantry were starving due to a shortage of bread. The phrase was first published in Rousseau's Confessions when Marie was only nine years old and not attributed to her, just to "a great princess". The phrase was used as anti-monarchist propaganda.
• George Washington did not have wooden teeth. His dentures were made of gold, hippopotamus ivory, lead, animal teeth (including horse and donkey teeth), and probably human teeth stolen from slaves.
• The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence did not occur on July 4, 1776. After the Second Continental Congress voted to declare independence on July 2, the final language of the document was approved on July 4, and it was printed and distributed on July 4–5. However, the actual signing occurred on August 2, 1776.
• Benjamin Franklin did not propose that the wild turkey be used as the symbol for the United States instead of the bald eagle. While he did serve on a commission that tried to design a seal after the Declaration of Independence, his proposal was an image of Moses. His objections to the eagle as a national symbol and preference for the turkey were stated in a 1784 letter to his daughter in response to the Society of the Cincinnati's use of the former; he never expressed that sentiment publicly.
• Benjamin Banneker did not recall from memory or reproduce Pierre (Peter) Charles L'Enfant's plan for the city of Washington, D.C., did not assist in the planning or surveying of that city, did not write one of the first almanacs in the United States, did not invent a clock and was not one of the first people to record observations of the periodical cicada (see Mythology of Benjamin Banneker for further information and references).
• There was never a bill to make German the official language of the United States that was defeated by one vote in the House of Representatives, nor has one been proposed at the state level. In 1794, a petition from a group of German immigrants was put aside on a procedural vote of 42 to 41, that would have had the government publish some laws in German. This was the basis of the Muhlenberg legend, named after the Speaker of the House at the time, Frederick Muhlenberg, a speaker of German descent who abstained from this vote.

Modern

Napoleon on the Bellerophon, a painting of Napoleon I by Charles Lock Eastlake. Napoleon was taller than his nickname, le Petit Caporal, suggests.

• Napoleon Bonaparte was not short. He was actually slightly taller than the average Frenchman of his time. After his death in 1821, the French emperor's height was recorded as 5 feet 2 inches in French feet, which in English measurements is 5 feet 7 inches (1.70 m). He was actually nicknamed le Petit Caporal (The Little Corporal) as a term of endearment. Napoleon was often accompanied by his imperial guard, who were selected for their height—this may have contributed to a perception that he was comparatively short.
• Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day, but the celebration of the Mexican Army's victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Mexico's Declaration of Independence from Spain in 1810 is celebrated on September 16.
• Victorian-era doctors did not invent the vibrator to cure female "hysteria" by triggering orgasm.
• The common image of Santa Claus (Father Christmas) as a jolly old man in red robes was not created by The Coca-Cola Company as an advertising gimmick. Despite being historically represented with different characteristics in different colors of robes, Santa Claus had already taken his modern form in popular culture and seen extensive use in other companies' advertisements and other mass media at the time Coca-Cola began using his image in the 1930s.
• The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did not "make the trains run on time". Much of the repair work had been performed before he and the Fascist Party came to power in 1922. Moreover, the Italian railways' supposed adherence to timetables was more propaganda than reality.
• There is no evidence of Polish cavalry mounting a brave but futile charge against German tanks using lances and sabers during the German invasion of Poland in 1939. This story may have originated from German propaganda efforts following the charge at Krojanty, in which a Polish cavalry brigade surprised German infantry in the open, and successfully charged and dispersed them, until driven off by armored cars. While Polish cavalry still carried the saber for such opportunities, they were trained to fight as highly mobile, dismounted cavalry (dragoons) and issued with light anti-tank weapons.
• During the occupation of Denmark by the Nazis during World War II, King Christian X of Denmark did not thwart Nazi attempts to identify Jews by wearing a yellow star himself. Jews in Denmark were never forced to wear the Star of David. The Danish resistance did help most Jews flee the country before the end of the war.

Albert Einstein, photographed at 14, did not fail mathematics at school.

• Albert Einstein did not fail mathematics classes in school. Einstein remarked, "I never failed in mathematics.... Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus." Einstein did, however, fail his first entrance exam into the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (ETH) in 1895, when he was two years younger than his fellow students, but scored exceedingly well in the mathematics and science sections, then passed on his second attempt.
• US President John F. Kennedy's words "Ich bin ein Berliner" are standard German for "I am a Berliner (citizen of Berlin)." It is widely believed that by not leaving out the indefinite article "ein," he changed the meaning of the sentence from the intended "I am a citizen of Berlin" to "I am a Berliner", a Berliner being a type of German pastry, similar to a jelly donut, amusing Germans.
• Although popularly known as the "red telephone", the Moscow–Washington hotline was never a telephone line, nor were red phones used. The first implementation of the hotline used teletype equipment, which was replaced by facsimile (fax) machines in 1988. Since 2008, the hotline has been a secure computer link over which the two countries exchange emails. Moreover, the hotline links the Kremlin to the Pentagon, not the White House.
• Russia does not explicitly have an independence day, nor is there a date that officially commemorates such an occasion. There have been many states that predate the current Russian Federation, and the public holiday of Russia Day only celebrates the establishment of present-day Russia, which occurred on June 12, 1990. Both Russians and foreigners commonly refer to Russia Day as "Russia's Independence Day" since it reflects the break from the Soviet Union that held dominion over Russia from 1922 to 1991.

United States

• The Alaska Purchase was generally popular in the United States, both among the public and the press. The opponents of the purchase who characterized it as "Seward's Folly", alluding to William H. Seward, the Secretary of State who negotiated it, represented a minority opinion at the time.
• Cowboy hats were not initially popular in the Western American frontier, with derby or bowler hats being the typical headgear of choice. Heavy marketing of the Stetson "Boss of the Plains" model in the years following the American Civil War was the primary driving force behind the cowboy hat's popularity, with its characteristic dented top not becoming standard until near the end of the 19th century.
• The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was not caused by Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern. A newspaper reporter later admitted to having invented the story to make colorful copy.
• There is no evidence that Frederic Remington, on assignment to Cuba in 1897, telegraphed William Randolph Hearst, "There will be no war. I wish to return," and that Hearst responded, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war". The anecdote was originally included in a book by James Creelman, and probably never happened.
• Immigrants' last names were not Americanized (voluntarily, mistakenly, or otherwise) upon arrival at Ellis Island. Officials there kept no records other than checking ship manifests created at the point of origin, and there was simply no paperwork that would have let them recast surnames, let alone any law. At the time in New York, anyone could change the spelling of their name simply by using that new spelling. These names are often referred to as an "Ellis Island Special".
• The paralytic illness of Franklin D. Roosevelt is now thought unlikely to be polio, which was the diagnosis at the time in 1921, but rather more consistent with Guillain–Barré syndrome.
• There was no widespread outbreak of panic across the United States in response to Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. Only a very small share of the radio audience was even listening to it, and isolated reports of scattered incidents and increased call volume to emergency services were played up the next day by newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a competitor for advertising. Both Welles and CBS, which had initially reacted apologetically, later came to realize that the myth benefited them and actively embraced it in later years.
• U.S. Senator George Smathers never gave a speech to a rural audience describing his opponent, Claude Pepper, as an "extrovert" whose sister was a "thespian", in the apparent hope they would confuse them with similar-sounding words like "pervert" and "lesbian". Smathers offered US$10,000 to anyone who could prove he had made the speech; it was never claimed.
• Rosa Parks was not sitting in the front ("white") section of the bus during the event that made her famous and incited the Montgomery bus boycott. Rather, she was sitting in the front of the back ("colored") section of the bus, where African Americans were expected to sit, but refused to give up her seat to a white man who asked for it (which was also the expected action of African Americans at the time).
• African-American intellectual and activist W.E.B. Du Bois did not renounce his U.S. citizenship while living in Ghana shortly before his death, as is often claimed. In early 1963, his membership in the Communist Party and support for the Soviet Union incited the U.S. State Department not to renew his passport while he was already in Ghana overseeing the creation of the Encyclopedia Africana. After leaving the embassy, he stated his intention to renounce his citizenship in protest. But while he took Ghanaian citizenship, he never went through the process of renouncing his American citizenship, and may not even have intended to.
• When the bartender Kitty Genovese was murdered outside her Queens apartment in 1964, there were not 37 neighbors standing idly by and watching who failed to call the police until after she was dead, as The New York Times initially reported to widespread public outrage that persisted for years. Later reporting established that the police report the Times had initially relied on was inaccurate, that Genovese had been attacked twice in different locations, and that, while the many witnesses heard the attack, they only heard brief portions and did not realize what was occurring, with only six or seven actually reporting seeing anything. Some called police; one said "I didn't want to get involved", an attitude later attributed to all the residents who saw or heard part of the attack.
• While it was praised by one architectural magazine before it was built as "the best high apartment of the year", the Pruitt–Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, considered to epitomize the failures of urban renewal in American cities after it was demolished in the early 1970s, never won any awards for its design. The architectural firm that designed the buildings did win an award for an earlier St. Louis project, which may have been confused with Pruitt–Igoe.
• The British Invasion was not singlehandedly to blame for the destruction of American popular music upon the first wave of Beatlemania in 1964. Only one act, The Kingston Trio, had no other factors in its decline; most others either continued or increased their popularity (The Beach Boys, The Four Seasons, and artists signed to Motown Records), were already seeing diminishing returns in 1963 even before the Invasion began (surf rock bands other than the Beach Boys, folk revival acts), or had other complicating factors in their decline (acts signed to Cameo Parkway were affected by the loss of American Bandstand, while Elvis Presley had moved on to a movie career).
• There is little contemporary documentary evidence for the notion that US Vietnam veterans were spat upon by anti-war protesters upon return to the United States. This belief was detailed in some biographical accounts and was later popularized by films such as Rambo.

Science and technology

Main article: Scientific misconceptions

Astronomy and spaceflight

A satellite image of a section of the Great Wall of China, running diagonally from lower left to upper right (not to be confused with the much more prominent river running from upper left to lower right). The region pictured is 12 by 12 kilometers (7.5 mi × 7.5 mi).

• The Great Wall of China is not, as is claimed, the only human-made object visible from space or from the Moon. None of the Apollo astronauts reported seeing any specific human-made object from the Moon, and even Earth-orbiting astronauts can see it only with magnification. City lights, however, are easily visible on the night side of Earth from orbit.
• Black holes have the same gravitational effects as any other equal mass in their place. They will draw objects nearby towards them, just as any other planetary body does, except at very close distances to the black hole – within the innermost stable circular orbit. If, for example, the Sun were replaced by a black hole of equal mass, the orbits of the planets would be essentially unaffected. A black hole can act like a "cosmic vacuum cleaner" and pull a substantial inflow of surrounding matter, but only if the star from which it formed was already doing so.
• Seasons are not caused by the entire Earth being closer to the Sun in the summer than in the winter, but by the effects of Earth's 23.4-degree axial tilt. Each hemisphere is tilted towards the Sun in its respective summer (July in the Northern Hemisphere and January in the Southern Hemisphere), resulting in longer days and more direct sunlight, with the opposite being true in the winter.
• When a meteor or spacecraft enters the atmosphere, the heat of entry is not (primarily) caused by friction, but by adiabatic compression of air in front of the object.
• Egg balancing is possible on every day of the year, not just the vernal equinox, and there is no relationship between any astronomical phenomenon and the ability to balance an egg.
• The Fisher Space Pen was not commissioned by NASA at a cost of millions of dollars, while the Soviets used pencils. It was independently developed by Paul C. Fisher, founder of the Fisher Pen Company, with $1 million of his own funds. NASA tested and approved the pen for space use, then purchased 400 pens at $6 per pen. The Soviet Union subsequently also purchased the space pen for its Soyuz spaceflights.
• Tang, Velcro, and Teflon were not spun off from technology originally developed by NASA for space flight, though many other products (such as memory foam and space blankets) were.
• The Sun is actually white rather than yellow. It is atmospheric scattering that causes the sun to look yellow, orange, or red at sunrise and sunset.

Biology

See also: Common misunderstandings of genetics

Vertebrates

The color of a red cape does not enrage a bull

• Old elephants that are near death do not leave their herd and instinctively direct themselves toward a specific location known as an elephants' graveyard to die.
• Bulls are not enraged by the color red, used in capes by professional matadors. Cattle are dichromats, so red does not stand out as a bright color. It is not the color of the cape, but the perceived threat by the matador that incites it to charge.
• Dogs do not sweat by salivating. Dogs actually do have sweat glands and not only on their tongues; they sweat mainly through their footpads. However, dogs do primarily regulate their body temperature through panting. (See also: Dog anatomy).
• Dogs do not age consistently seven times as quickly as humans. Aging in dogs varies widely depending on the breed; certain breeds, such as giant dog breeds and English bulldogs, have much shorter lifespans than average. Most dogs age consistently across all breeds in the first year of life, reaching adolescence by one year old; smaller and medium-sized breeds begin to age more slowly in adulthood.
• Lemmings do not engage in mass suicidal dives off cliffs when migrating. The scenes of lemming suicides in the Disney documentary film White Wilderness, which popularized this idea, were completely fabricated. The misconception itself is much older, dating back to at least the late 19th century, though its exact origins are uncertain.
• Bats are not blind. While about 70 percent of bat species, mainly in the microbat family, use echolocation to navigate, all bat species have eyes and are capable of sight. In addition, almost all bats in the megabat or fruit bat family cannot echolocate and have excellent night vision.
• Ostriches do not stick their heads in the sand to hide from enemies or to sleep. This misconception's origins are uncertain but it was probably popularized by Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), who wrote that ostriches "imagine, when they have thrust their head and neck into a bush, that the whole of their body is concealed."
• A duck's quack actually does echo, although the echo may be difficult to hear for humans under some circumstances.
• Frogs die immediately when cast into boiling water, rather than leaping out; furthermore, frogs will attempt to escape cold water that is slowly heated past their critical thermal maximum.
• The memory span of goldfish is much longer than just a few seconds. It is up to a few months long.
• Sharks can suffer from cancer. The misconception that sharks do not get cancer was spread by the 1992 book Sharks Don't Get Cancer, which was used to sell extracts of shark cartilage as cancer prevention treatments. Reports of carcinomas in sharks exist, and current data do not support any conclusions about the incidence of tumors in sharks.
• Great white sharks do not mistake human divers for pinnipeds. When attacking pinnipeds, the shark surfaces quickly and attacks violently. In contrast, attacks on humans are slower and less violent: the shark charges at a normal pace, bites, and swims off. Great white sharks have efficient eyesight and color vision; the bite is not predatory, but rather for identification of an unfamiliar object.
• There is no such thing as an "alpha" in a wolf pack. An early study that coined the term "alpha wolf" had only observed unrelated adult wolves living in captivity. In the wild, wolf packs operate more like human families: there is no defined sense of rank, parents are in charge until the young grow up and start their own families, younger wolves do not overthrow an "alpha" to become the new leader, and social dominance fights are situational.
• Snake jaws cannot unhinge. The posterior end of the lower jaw bones contains a quadrate bone, allowing jaw extension. The anterior tips of the lower jaw bones are joined by a flexible ligament allowing them to bow outwards, increasing the mouth gape.
• Tomato juice is ineffective at neutralizing the odor of a skunk; it only appears to work due to olfactory fatigue. For dogs that get sprayed, The Humane Society of the United States recommends using a mixture of dilute hydrogen peroxide (3%), baking soda, and dishwashing liquid.
• Porcupines do not shoot their quills. They can detach, but do not project.
• Mice do not have a special appetite for cheese, and will eat it only for lack of better options; they actually favor sweet, sugary foods. It is unclear where the myth came from.
• There is no credible evidence that the Candiru, a South American parasitic catfish, can swim up a human urethra if one urinates in the water in which it lives. The sole documented case of such an incident, written in 1997, has been heavily criticized upon peer review and this phenomenon is now largely considered a myth.
• The bold, powerful cry commonly associated with the bald eagle in popular culture is actually that of a red-tailed hawk. Bald eagle vocalizations are much softer and chirpy, and bear far more resemblance to the calls of gulls.
• Piranhas do not only eat meat but are omnivorous, and they only swim in schools to defend themselves from predators and not to attack. They very rarely attack humans, only when under stress and feeling threatened, and even then bites typically only occur on hands and feet.

Invertebrates

Bombus pratorum over an Echinacea purpurea inflorescence; a widespread misconception holds that bumblebees should be incapable of flight.

• Earthworms do not become two worms when cut in half. Only a limited number of earthworm species are capable of anterior regeneration. When such earthworms are bisected, only the front half of the worm (where the mouth is located) can feed and survive, while the other half dies. Some species of planarian flatworms, however, actually do become two new planarians when bisected or split down the middle.
• Houseflies have an average lifespan of 20 to 30 days, not 24 hours. The misconception may arise from confusion with mayflies, which, in some species, have an adult lifespan of as little as 5 minutes. A housefly egg will hatch into a maggot within 24 hours of being laid.
• The daddy longlegs spider (Pholcidae) is not the most venomous spider in the world; though they can indeed pierce human skin, the tiny amount of venom they carry causes only a mild burning sensation for a few seconds. In addition, there is confusion regarding the use of the name daddy longlegs, because harvestmen (order Opiliones, which are arachnids but not spiders, and have no venom), crane flies (which are insects), and male mosquitoes (also insects) are also sometimes called daddy longlegs in regional dialects, and may occasionally share the misconception of being venomous.
• The flight mechanism and aerodynamics of the bumblebee (as well as other insects) are quite well understood, despite the urban legend that calculations show that they should not be able to fly. In the 1930s, the French entomologist Antoine Magnan indeed postulated that bumblebees theoretically should not be able to fly in his book Le Vol des Insectes (The Flight of Insects). Magnan later realized his error and retracted the suggestion. However, the hypothesis became generalized to the false notion that "scientists think that bumblebees should not be able to fly".
• People do not swallow large numbers of spiders during sleep. A sleeping person makes noise which warn spiders of danger.
• Earwigs are not known to purposely climb into external ear canals, though there have been anecdotal reports of earwigs being found in the ear. Entomologists suggest that the origin of the name is actually a reference to the appearance of the hindwings, which are unique and distinctive among insects, and resemble a human ear when unfolded.
• European honey bees are not essential to human food production, despite claims that without their pollination, humanity would starve or die out "within four years".In fact, many important crops need no insect pollination at all. The ten most important crops, comprising 60% of all human food energy, all fall into this category.
• Female praying mantises rarely eat the males during coitus, especially in their natural environment. In a study in a laboratory at the University of Central Arkansas, it was observed that 1 out of 45 times the female ate the male before mating and the male ate the female with that same frequency.
• Ticks do not fall from trees onto people. Instead, they lie in wait in high grass.

Plants

Sunflowers with the sun clearly visible behind them.

• Carnivorous plants do survive without food. Catching insects, however, supports their growth.
• Poinsettias are not highly toxic to humans or cats. While it is true that they are mildly irritating to the skin or stomach, and may sometimes cause diarrhea and vomiting if eaten, they rarely cause serious medical problems.
• Sunflowers do not always point to the sun. Flowering sunflowers face a fixed direction (often east) all day long, but do not necessarily face the sun. However, in an earlier developmental stage, before the appearance of flower heads, the immature buds do track the sun (a phenomenon called heliotropism) and the fixed alignment of the mature flowers toward a certain direction is often the result.

Evolution and paleontology

Further information: Introduction to evolution and Objections to evolution

• The word theory in "the theory of evolution" does not imply scientific doubt regarding its validity; the concepts of theory and hypothesis have specific meanings in a scientific context. While theory in colloquial usage may denote a hunch or conjecture, a scientific theory is a set of principles that explains an observable phenomenon in natural terms. "Scientific fact and theory are not categorically separable", and evolution is a theory in the same sense as germ theory or the theory of gravitation.
• Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life or the origin and development of the universe. The theory of evolution deals primarily with changes in successive generations over time after life has already originated. The scientific model concerned with the origin of the first organisms from organic or inorganic molecules is known as abiogenesis, and the prevailing theory for explaining the early development of our universe is the Big Bang model.

  

  A reconstruction of Aegyptopithecus, a primate predating the split between the human and Old World monkey lineages in human evolution

• Humans did not evolve from either of the living species of chimpanzees (common chimpanzees and bonobos). Humans and chimpanzees did, however, evolve from a common ancestor. The most recent common ancestor of humans and the living chimpanzees lived between 5 and 8 million years ago.
• Evolution is not a progression from inferior to superior organisms, and it also does not necessarily result in an increase in complexity. A population can evolve to become simpler, having a smaller genome, but biological devolution is a misnomer.
• Evolution does not "plan" to improve an organism's fitness to survive. The misconception is encouraged as it is common shorthand for biologists to speak of a purpose as a concise form of expression (sometimes called the "metaphor of purpose"); it is less cumbersome to say "Dinosaurs may have evolved feathers for courtship" than "Feathers may have been selected for when they arose as they gave dinosaurs a selective advantage during courtship over their non-feathered rivals".
• Not all dinosaurs became extinct during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Birds evolved from small feathered theropods in the Jurassic, and while most dinosaur lineages were cut short at the end of the Cretaceous, some birds survived. Consequently, dinosaurs are part of the modern fauna.
• Humans and dinosaurs (other than birds) did not coexist. The last of the non-avian dinosaurs died 66 million years ago in the course of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, whereas the earliest members of genus Homo (humans) evolved between 2.3 and 2.4 million years ago. This places a 63-million-year expanse of time between the last non-avian dinosaurs and the earliest humans. Humans did coexist with woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats—mammals often erroneously depicted alongside dinosaurs.

Tyrannosaurus rex. Non-avian dinosaurs died out in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period.

• Petroleum does not originate from dinosaurs but rather bacteria and algae.
• Mammals did not evolve from any modern group of reptiles; rather, mammals and reptiles evolved from a common ancestor. Soon after the first reptile-like animals appeared, they split into two branches, the sauropsids and the synapsids. The line leading to mammals (the synapsids) diverged from the line leading to modern reptilian lines (the sauropsids) about 320 million years ago, in the mid-Carboniferous period. Only later (in the late Carboniferous or Early Permian) did the modern reptilian groups (lepidosaurs, turtles and crocodiles) diverge. The mammals themselves are the only survivors of the synapsid line.

Computing and the Internet

• Computers running macOS or Linux are not immune to malware such as trojan horses or computer viruses. Specialized malware designed to attack macOS and Linux systems does exist. However, the vast majority of viruses are developed for Microsoft Windows.
• The deep web is not primarily full of pornography, illegal drug trade websites and stolen bank details. The area that contains this illegal information is a small portion of the deep web known as the "dark web." Much of the deep web consists of academic libraries, databases, and anything that is not indexed by normal search engines.
• Private browsing, such as incognito mode, does not protect users from being tracked by websites or their internet service provider (ISP). Such entities can still use information such as IP addresses and user accounts to uniquely identify users.
• Quantum computers cannot solve difficult search problems by simply trying all the possibilities. Quantum computers do use quantum superposition to simultaneously examine huge numbers of possible solutions at once, effectively a form of parallel computation, but the computer cannot "pick" the right one.

Economics

Total population living in extreme poverty, by world region 1987 to 2015

• The total number of people living in extreme absolute poverty globally, by the widely used metric of $1.00/day (in 1990 U.S. dollars) has decreased over the last several decades, but most people surveyed in several countries incorrectly think it has increased or stayed the same. Additionally, the portion of people living in extreme poverty has declined as well, no matter which income threshold is used.
• Monopolists do not try to sell items for the highest possible price, nor do they try to maximize profit per unit, but rather they try to maximize total profit.
• For any given production set, there is not a set amount of labor input (a "lump of labor") to produce that output. This fallacy is commonly seen in Luddite and later, related movements as an argument either that automation causes permanent, structural unemployment, or that labor-limiting regulation can decrease unemployment. But, in fact, changes in capital allocation, efficiency, and economies of learning can change the amount of labor input for a given set of production.
• Income is not a direct factor in determining credit score in the United States. Rather, credit score is impacted by the amount of unused available credit, which is in turn affected by income. Income is also considered when evaluating creditworthiness more generally.
• The US public vastly overestimates the amount spent on foreign aid.
• An increase in gross income (such as a promotion at a salaried job) will never reduce one's post-tax earnings (net income) due to putting one in a higher tax bracket. In every country with tax brackets, they only indicate the marginal tax rate, as opposed to the total income tax rate. Only the additional income earned in the higher tax bracket is taxed at the elevated rate, and the income received before is taxed at lower rates. Relatedly, the existence of a tax bracket with 100% tax rate only imposes a ceiling on net income, and does not reduce net income to zero. A welfare trap, or welfare cliff, however, does happen when benefits are suddenly withdrawn when passing a certain income threshold. A tax bracket of 102% existed briefly in Sweden in the 1970s however, causing a higher gross income to reduce the net income, something that author Astrid Lindgren experienced and satirised in her short story Pomperipossa in Monismania.

Environmental science

See also: Tornado myths

Ozone depletion is not a cause of global warming.

• Global warming is not caused by the hole in the ozone layer. Ozone depletion is a separate problem caused by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which have been released into the atmosphere.
• The Yellowstone Caldera is not overdue for a supervolcano eruption.

Human body and health

See also: Urban legends about drugs

Electric fans in South Korea. A widely held misconception is that leaving fans on while asleep can be fatal.

• Sleeping in a closed room with an electric fan running does not result in "fan death," as is widely believed in South Korea.
• Waking sleepwalkers does not harm them. While it is true that a person may be confused or disoriented for a short time after awakening, this does not cause them further harm. In contrast, sleepwalkers may injure themselves if they trip over objects or lose their balance while sleepwalking.
• Eating less than an hour before swimming does not increase the risk of experiencing muscle cramps or drowning. One study shows a correlation between alcohol consumption and drowning, but there is no evidence cited regarding the consumption of food or stomach cramps.
• Drowning is often inconspicuous to onlookers. In most cases, the instinctive drowning response prevents the victim from waving or yelling (known as "aquatic distress"), which are therefore not dependable signs of trouble; indeed, most drowning victims undergoing the response do not show prior evidence of distress.
• Human blood in veins is not actually blue. Hemoglobin gives blood its red color. Deoxygenated blood (in veins) has a deep red color, and oxygenated blood (in arteries) has a light cherry-red color. The misconception probably arises for two reasons: 1) Veins below the skin appear blue or green. This is due to a variety of reasons only weakly dependent on the color of the blood, including subsurface scattering of light through the skin, and human color perception. 2) Many diagrams use colors to show the difference between veins (usually shown in blue) and arteries (usually shown in red).
• Exposure to a vacuum, or experiencing all but the most extreme uncontrolled decompression, does not cause the body to explode, or internal fluids to boil. (However, fluids in the mouth or lungs will boil at altitudes above the Armstrong limit.) Instead, it will lead to a loss of consciousness once the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood, followed by death from hypoxia within minutes.
• Stretching before or after exercise does not reduce muscle soreness.
• Exercise-induced muscle soreness is not caused by lactic acid buildup. Muscular lactic acid levels during and after exercise do not correlate with soreness; exercise-induced muscle soreness is thought to be due to microtrauma from an unaccustomed or strenuous exercise, against which the body adapts with repeated bouts of the same exercise.
• Swallowing gasoline does not generally require special emergency treatment, as long as it goes into the stomach and not the lungs, and inducing vomiting can make it worse.
• Urine is not sterile, not even in the bladder.
• People tend to overestimate the physical strength of black men.
• Sudden immersion into freezing water does not typically cause death by hypothermia, but rather from the cold shock response, which can cause cardiac arrest, heart attack, or hyperventilation leading to drowning.
• Cremated remains are not ashes in the usual sense. After the incineration is completed, the dry bone fragments are swept out of the retort and pulverised by a machine called a Cremulator—essentially a high-capacity, high-speed blender—to process them into "ashes" or "cremated remains".

Senses

An incorrect map of the tongue showing zones that taste bitter (1), sour (2), salty (3) and sweet (4). Actually, all zones can sense all tastes, and there is also the taste of umami (not shown on picture).

• Infants can and do feel pain.
• All different tastes can be detected on all parts of the tongue by taste buds, with slightly increased sensitivities in different locations depending on the person, contrary to the popular belief that specific tastes only correspond to specific mapped sites on the tongue.
• There are not four primary tastes, but five: in addition to bitter, sour, salty, and sweet, humans have taste receptors for umami, which is a "savory" or "meaty" taste. Fat does interact with specific receptors in taste bud cells, but whether it is a sixth primary taste remains inconclusive.
• Humans have more than the commonly cited five senses. The number of senses in various categorizations ranges from five to more than 20. In addition to sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing, which were the senses identified by Aristotle, humans can sense balance and acceleration (equilibrioception), pain (nociception), body and limb position (proprioception or kinesthetic sense), and relative temperature (thermoception). Other senses sometimes identified are the sense of time, echolocation, itching, pressure, hunger, thirst, fullness of the stomach, need to urinate, need to defecate, and blood carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels.

Skin and hair

• Water-induced wrinkles are not caused by the skin absorbing water and swelling. They are caused by the autonomic nervous system, which triggers localized vasoconstriction in response to wet skin, yielding a wrinkled appearance. One hypothesis suggests that this improves traction with wet objects; however, a 2014 study showed no improvement in handling wet objects with wrinkled fingertips.
• Shaving does not cause terminal hair to grow back thicker (more dense) or darker. This belief is due to hair that has never been cut having a tapered end, whereas, after cutting, the edge is blunt and therefore thicker than the tapered ends; the sharper, unworn edges make the cut hair appear thicker and feel coarser. That short hairs are less flexible than longer hairs also contributes to this effect.
• A person's hair and fingernails do not continue to grow after death. Rather, the skin dries and shrinks away from the bases of hairs and nails, giving the appearance of growth.
• Hair care products cannot actually "repair" split ends and damaged hair. They can prevent damage from occurring in the first place, and they can also smooth down the cuticle in a glue-like fashion so that it appears repaired, and generally make hair appear in better condition.
• Pulling or cutting a grey hair will not cause two grey hairs to grow in its place. It will only cause the one hair to grow back because only one hair can grow from each follicle.
• The gene for red hair is not becoming extinct, nor will the gene for blond hair do so, although both are recessive alleles. Redheads and blonds may become rarer but will not die out unless everyone who carries those alleles dies or fails to reproduce.
• Acne is mostly caused by genetics, and is not caused by a lack of hygiene or eating fatty foods, though certain medication or a carbohydrate-rich diet may worsen it.

Nutrition, food, and drink

• Diet has little influence on the body's detoxification, and detoxification diets "have no scientific basis". Some scientists called those diets a "waste of time and money". Despite this, there is a common misconception that specific diets aid this process or could remove substances that the body is unable to remove by itself. Toxins are removed from the body by the liver and kidneys.
• Drinking eight glasses (2–3 liters) of water a day is not needed to maintain health. The amount of water needed varies by person (weight), diet, activity level, clothing, and environment (heat and humidity). Water does not actually need to be drunk in pure form, but can be derived from liquids such as juices, tea, milk, soups, etc., and from foods including fruits and vegetables.
• Drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages does not cause dehydration for regular drinkers, although it can for occasional drinkers.
• Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. Double-blind trials have shown no difference in behavior between children given sugar-full or sugar-free diets, even in studies specifically looking at children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or those considered sensitive to sugar. A 2019 meta-analysis found no positive effect of sugar consumption on mood but did find an association with lower alertness and increased fatigue within an hour of consumption, known as a sugar crash.
• Alcoholic beverages do not make the entire body warmer. Alcoholic drinks create the sensation of warmth because they cause blood vessels to dilate and stimulate nerve endings near the surface of the skin with an influx of warm blood. This can actually result in making the core body temperature lower, as it allows for easier heat exchange with a cold external environment.
• Alcohol does not necessarily kill brain cells. Alcohol can, however, lead indirectly to the death of brain cells in two ways: (1) In chronic, heavy alcohol users whose brains have adapted to the effects of alcohol, abrupt ceasing following heavy use can cause excitotoxicity leading to cellular death in multiple areas of the brain. (2) In alcoholics who get most of their daily calories from alcohol, a deficiency of thiamine can produce Korsakoff's syndrome, which is associated with serious brain damage.
• A vegetarian or vegan diet can provide enough protein for adequate nutrition. In fact, typical protein intakes of ovo-lacto vegetarians and vegans meet or exceed requirements. However, a vegan diet does require supplementation of vitamin B₁₂.
• Swallowed chewing gum does not take seven years to digest. In fact, chewing gum is mostly indigestible, and passes through the digestive system at the same rate as other matter.
• Spicy food or coffee does not have a significant effect on the development of peptic ulcers.
• The beta carotene in carrots does not enhance night vision beyond normal levels for people receiving an adequate amount, only in those suffering from a deficiency of vitamin A. The belief that it does may have originated from World War II British disinformation meant to explain the Royal Air Force's improved success in night battles, which was actually due to radar and the use of red lights on instrument panels.
• Most cases of obesity are not related to slower resting metabolism. Resting metabolic rate does not vary much between people. Overweight people tend to underestimate the amount of food they eat, and underweight people tend to overestimate. In fact, overweight people tend to have faster metabolic rates due to the increased energy required by the larger body.
• Eating normal amounts of soy does not cause hormonal imbalance.
• The order in which different types of alcoholic beverages are consumed ("Grape or grain but never the twain" and "Beer before liquor never sicker; liquor before beer in the clear") does not affect intoxication or create adverse side effects.
• Absinthe does not have any psychoactive or hallucinogenic properties, and is no more dangerous than any other alcoholic beverage of equivalent proof. This misconception stems from late 19th and early 20th century distillers who produced cheap knockoff versions of absinthe, which used copper salts to recreate the distinct green color of true absinthe, and some also reportedly adulterated cheap absinthe with poisonous antimony trichloride, reputed to enhance the louching effect.

Human sexuality

• There is no physical test for virginity, and the condition of the hymen says nothing about a person's sexual experience. Bleeding is not directly associated with first vaginal sexual intercourse, and indicates nothing about sexual experience. Physical virginity tests have no scientific merit.
• Neither race nor hand size correlate with human penis size, but finger length ratio may.
• While pregnancies from sex between first cousins do carry a small risk of birth defects, this risk is often exaggerated. The risk is 5–6% (similar to that of a 40-year-old woman giving birth), compared with a baseline risk of 3–4%. The effects of inbreeding depression, while still relatively small compared to other factors (and thus difficult to control for in a scientific experiment), become more noticeable if isolated and maintained for several generations.
• There is no physiological basis for the belief that having sex in the days leading up to a sporting event or contest is detrimental to performance. In fact it has been suggested that sex prior to sports activity can elevate male testosterone level, which could potentially enhance performance.
• There is no definitive proof of the existence of the vaginal G-spot, and the general consensus is that no such spot exists on the female body.
• Closeted or latent homosexuality is not correlated with internalized homophobia. A 1996 study claiming a connection in men has not been verified by subsequent studies, including a 2013 study that found no correlation.

Brain

• Phineas Gage's brain injuries, caused by a several-foot-long tamping rod driven through his skull, did not cause him to become a "psychopath", as many sources claim; while he was temporarily disabled by the accident, far from "gambling" himself into "emotional and reputational ... bankruptcy", Gage eventually moved to Chile and found success in the physically and mentally demanding job of stagecoach driver. Fanciful descriptions of his "immoral behavior" in later life are without factual basis.

Golgi-stained neurons in human hippocampal tissue. It is commonly believed that humans will not grow new brain cells, but research has shown that some neurons can reform in humans.

• Mental abilities are not absolutely separated into the left and right cerebral hemispheres of the brain. Some mental functions, such as speech and language (such as Broca's area and Wernicke's area), tend to activate one hemisphere of the brain more than the other in some kinds of tasks. If one hemisphere is damaged or removed at an early age, these functions can often be recovered in part, or even in full, by the other hemisphere (see neuroplasticity). Other abilities, such as motor control, memory, and general reasoning, are served equally by the two hemispheres.
• It is not true that by the age of two years, humans have generated all of the brain cells they will ever have, a belief held by medical experts until 1998. It is now understood that new neurons can be created in some parts of the postnatal brain. A 2013 study showed that also in old age, about 700 new neurons are produced in the hippocampus daily.
• Vaccines do not cause autism or autism spectrum disorders. Although fraudulent research by British ex-doctor Andrew Wakefield claimed a connection, repeated attempts to reproduce the results ended in failure, and the research was ultimately shown to have been manipulated.
• People do not use only 10% of their brains. While it is true that a small minority of neurons in the brain are actively firing at any one time, the inactive neurons are important as well. This misconception has been commonplace in American culture at least as far back as the start of the 20th century, and was attributed to William James, who apparently used the expression only metaphorically.

Disease

See also: Misconceptions about HIV and AIDS and Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic

• The common cold is caused by germs, not cold temperature, although cold temperature may somewhat weaken the immune system.
• In those with the common cold, the color of the sputum or nasal secretion may vary from clear to yellow to green and does not indicate the class of agent causing the infection.
• Vitamin C does not prevent the common cold, although it may have a protective effect during intense cold-weather exercise. If taken daily, it may slightly reduce the duration and severity of colds, but it has no effect if taken after the cold starts.

The bumps on a toad are not warts, and therefore cannot cause warts on humans.

• Drinking milk or consuming other dairy products does not increase mucus production. As a result, they do not need to be avoided by those with the flu or cold congestion.
• Humans cannot catch warts from toads or other animals; the bumps on a toad are not warts. Warts on human skin are caused by human papillomavirus, which is unique to humans.
• Neither cracking one's knuckles nor exercising while in good health causes osteoarthritis.
• Eating nuts, popcorn, or seeds does not increase the risk of diverticulitis. These foods may actually have a protective effect.
• Stress does not play a major role in hypertension, although it is widely believed to do so by lay people. Specific relaxation therapies are not supported by the evidence. Acute stress has been shown to temporarily increase blood-pressure levels. Chronic stress may cause a sustained rise in high blood-pressure.
• In people with eczema, bathing does not dry the skin and may in fact be beneficial.
• There have never been any programs in the US that provide access to dialysis machines in exchange for pull tabs on beverage cans. This rumor has existed since at least the 1970s, and usually cites the National Kidney Foundation as the organization offering the program. The Foundation itself has denied the rumor, noting that dialysis machines are primarily funded by Medicare.
• Rhinoceros horn in powdered form is not used as an aphrodisiac in traditional Chinese medicine as Cornu Rhinoceri Asiatici (犀角, xījiǎo, "rhinoceros horn"). It is prescribed for fevers and convulsions, a treatment not supported by evidence-based medicine.
• Leprosy is not auto-degenerative as commonly supposed, meaning that it will not (on its own) cause body parts to be damaged or fall off. Leprosy causes rashes to form and may degrade cartilage and, if untreated, inflame tissue. In addition, leprosy is only mildly contagious, partly because 95% of those infected with the mycobacteria that causes leprosy do not develop the disease. Tzaraath, a Biblical disease that disfigures is the skin is often identified as leprosy, and may be the source of many myths about the disease.
• Rust does not cause tetanus infection. The Clostridium tetani bacterium is generally found in dirty environments. Since the same conditions that harbor tetanus bacteria also promote rusting of metal, many people associate rust with tetanus. C. tetani requires anoxic conditions to reproduce and these are found in the permeable layers of rust that form on oxygen-absorbing, unprotected ironwork.
• Quarantine has never been a standard procedure for those with severe combined immunodeficiency, despite the condition's popular nickname ("bubble boy syndrome") and its portrayal in film. A bone marrow transplant in the earliest months of life is the standard course of treatment. The exceptional case of David Vetter, who indeed lived much of his life encased in a sterile environment because he would not receive a transplant until age 12 (the transplant, because of failure to detect mononucleosis, instead killed Vetter), was one of the primary inspirations for the "bubble boy" trope.
• Gunnison, Colorado, did not avoid the 1918 flu pandemic by using protective sequestration. The implementation of protective sequestration did prevent the virus from spreading outside a single household after a single carrier came into the town while it was in effect, but the sequestration was not sustainable and had to be lifted in February 1919. A month later, the flu hit the town, killing five and infecting dozens of others.
• Antibiotics are ineffective in treating many diseases, and their overuse is not innocuous; the misconception that they are effective against many common viral infections leads to their overuse.
• The frequency of side effects in medication package inserts describes the how often the effect occurs after taking a drug, not because of the drug.

Inventions

• George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter. He did compile hundreds of uses for and products that could be made from peanuts (some of which, like peanut butter, were variants of products that already existed) and hundreds more for soybeans, pecans, and sweet potatoes to promote his system of crop rotation.
• Although the guillotine was named after the French physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, he neither invented nor was executed with this device. He died peacefully on his own bed in 1814.
• Thomas Crapper did not invent the flush toilet. A forerunner of the modern toilet was invented by the Elizabethan courtier Sir John Harington in the 16th century, and in 1775 the Scottish mechanic Alexander Cumming developed and patented a design for a toilet with an S-trap and flushing mechanism. Crapper, however, did much to increase the popularity of the flush toilet and introduced several innovations in the late 19th century, holding nine patents, including one for the floating ballcock. The word crap is also not derived from his name (see the Words, phrases and languages section above).
• Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. He did, however, develop the first practical light bulb in 1880 (employing a carbonized bamboo filament), shortly prior to Joseph Swan, who invented an even more efficient bulb in 1881 (which used a cellulose filament).
• Henry Ford did not invent either the automobile or the assembly line. He did improve the assembly line process substantially, sometimes through his own engineering but more often through sponsoring the work of his employees. Karl Benz (co-founder of Mercedes-Benz) is credited with the invention of the first modern automobile, and the assembly line has existed throughout history.
• Al Gore never said that he had "invented" the Internet. What Gore actually said was, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet", in reference to his political work towards developing the Internet for widespread public use. Gore was the original drafter of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991, which provided significant funding for supercomputing centers, and this in turn led to upgrades of a major part of the already-existing early 1990s Internet backbone, the NSFNet, and development of NCSA Mosaic, the browser that popularized the World Wide Web. (See also Al Gore and information technology.)
• James Watt did not invent the steam engine, nor were his ideas on steam engine power inspired by a kettle lid pressured open by steam. Watt improved upon the already commercially successful Newcomen atmospheric engine (invented in 1712) in the 1760s and 1770s, making certain improvements critical to its future usage, particularly the external condenser, increasing its efficiency, and later the mechanism for transforming reciprocating motion into rotary motion; his new steam engine later gained huge fame as a result.

Chemistry or materials science

• Glass does not flow at room temperature as a high-viscosity liquid. Although glass shares some molecular properties found in liquids, glass at room temperature is an amorphous solid that only begins to flow above the glass transition temperature, though the exact nature of the glass transition is not considered settled among scientists. Panes of stained glass windows are often thicker at the bottom than at the top, and this has been cited as an example of the slow flow of glass over centuries. However, this unevenness is due to the window manufacturing processes used at the time. No such distortion is observed in other glass objects, such as sculptures or optical instruments, that are of similar or even greater age.
• Most diamonds are not formed from highly compressed coal. More than 99 percent of diamonds ever mined have formed in the conditions of extreme heat and pressure about 140 kilometers (87 mi) below the earth's surface. Coal is formed from prehistoric plants buried much closer to the surface, and is unlikely to migrate below 3.2 kilometers (2.0 mi) through common geological processes. Most diamonds that have been dated are older than the first land plants, and are therefore older than coal. It is possible that diamonds can form from coal in subduction zones and in meteoroid impacts, but diamonds formed in this way are rare and the carbon source is more likely carbonate rocks and organic carbon in sediments, rather than coal.
• Diamonds are not infinitely hard, and are subject to wear and scratching: although they are the hardest known material on Mohs Scale, they can be scratched by other diamonds and worn down even by much softer materials, such as vinyl records.
• Neither tin foil nor tin cans still use tin as a primary material. Aluminum foil has replaced tin foil in almost all uses since the 20th century; tin cans now primarily use steel or aluminum as their main metal.

Mathematics

Bust of Pythagoras in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. Classical historians dispute whether he ever made any mathematical discoveries.

• Although the Greek philosopher Pythagoras is most famous today for his supposed mathematical discoveries, classical historians dispute whether he himself ever actually made any significant contributions to the field. He did not discover his famous theorem, because it was known and used by the Babylonians and Indians centuries before him, but he may have been the first to introduce it to the Greeks.
• In mathematics, the repeating decimal commonly written as 0.999... represents exactly the same quantity as the number one. Despite having the appearance of representing a smaller number, 0.999... is a symbol for the number 1 in exactly the same way that .333... is an equivalent notation for the number represented by the fraction 1/3.
• There is no evidence that the ancient Greeks deliberately designed the Parthenon to match the golden ratio. The Parthenon was completed in 438 BCE, more than a century before the first recorded mention of the ratio by Euclid. Similarly, Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man makes no mention of the golden ratio in its text, although it describes many other proportions.
• The p-value is not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, or the probability that the alternative hypothesis is false; it is the probability of obtaining results at least as extreme as the results actually observed under the assumption that the null hypothesis was correct, which can indicate the incompatibility of results with the specific statistical model assumed in the null hypothesis. This misconception, and similar ones like it, contributes to the common misuse of p-values in education and research.

Physics

An illustration of the (incorrect) equal-transit-time explanation of aerofoil lift

• The lift force is not generated by the air taking the same time to travel above and below an aircraft's wing. This misconception, sometimes called the equal transit-time fallacy, is widespread among textbooks and non-technical reference books, and even appears in pilot training materials. In fact, the air moving over the top of an aerofoil generating lift is always moving much faster than the equal transit theory would imply, as described in the incorrect and correct explanations of lift force.
• Blowing over a curved piece of paper does not demonstrate Bernoulli's principle. Although a common classroom experiment is often explained this way, it is false to make a connection between the flow on the two sides of the paper using Bernoulli's equation since the air above and below are different flow fields and Bernoulli's principle only applies within a flow field. The paper rises because the air follows the curve of the paper and a curved streamline will develop pressure differences perpendicular to the airflow. Bernoulli's principle predicts that the decrease in pressure is associated with an increase in speed, that is, that as the air passes over the paper it speeds up and moves faster than it was moving when it left the demonstrator's mouth. But this is not apparent from the demonstration.
• The Coriolis effect does not cause water to consistently drain from basins in a clockwise/counter-clockwise direction depending on the hemisphere. The common myth often refers to the draining action of flush toilets and bathtubs. Rotation is determined by whatever minor rotation is initially present at the time the water starts to drain. The Coriolis force can impact the direction of the flow of water but only in rare circumstances. The water has to be so still that the effective rotation rate of the Earth is faster than that of the water relative to its container and the externally applied torques (such as might be caused by flow over an uneven bottom surface) have to be very small.
• Neither gyroscopic forces nor geometric trail are required for a rider to balance a bicycle or for it to demonstrate self-stability. Although gyroscopic forces and trail can be contributing factors, it has been demonstrated that those factors are neither required nor sufficient by themselves.
• The idea that lightning never strikes the same place twice is one of the oldest and best-known superstitions about lightning, but has no basis in evidence. Lightning in a thunderstorm in a given area is more likely to strike objects and spots the more prominent or conductive they are. Lightning strikes the Empire State Building in New York City about 100 times per year.
• Heat lightning does not exist as a distinct phenomenon. What is mistaken for "heat lightning" is usually ordinary lightning from storms too distant to hear the associated thunder; such lightning carries the same risk of striking a person as ordinary lightning.
• A penny dropped from the Empire State Building would not kill a person or crack the sidewalk, though it could cause injury.
• Using a programmable thermostat's setback feature to limit heating or cooling in a temporarily unoccupied building does not waste as much energy as leaving the temperature constant. Using setback saves energy (five to fifteen percent) because heat transfer across the surface of the building is roughly proportional to the temperature difference between its inside and the outside.
• It is not possible for a person to completely drown in quicksand, as commonly depicted in fiction, although sand entrapment in the nearshore of a body of water can be a drowning hazard as the tide rises.
• Quantum nonlocality caused by quantum entanglement does not allow faster-than-light communication or imply instant action at a distance, despite its common characterization as "spooky action at a distance". Rather, it means that certain experiments cannot be explained by local realism.

Psychology

• Dyslexia is not a cognitive disorder characterized by the reversal of letters or words and mirror writing. It is a disorder of people who have at least average intelligence and who have difficulty in spelling words, reading quickly, writing words, "sounding out" words in the head, pronouncing words when reading aloud, or understanding what they read. Although some dyslexics also have problems with letter reversal, it is not a symptom. Letter reversal can be a characteristic in some cases of dyslexia, but dyslexia is not diagnosed on the basis of seeing or writing letters or words backward or in reverse.
• There is no scientific evidence for the existence of "photographic" memory in adults (the ability to remember images with so high a precision as to mimic a camera), but some young children have eidetic memory. Many people have claimed to have a photographic memory, but those people have been shown to have good memories as a result of mnemonic devices rather than a natural capacity for detailed memory encoding. There are rare cases of individuals with exceptional memory, but none of them has a memory that mimics that of a camera.
• Schizophrenia is not split or multiple personality disorder—a split or multiple personality is dissociative identity disorder. The term was coined from the Greek roots schizein and phrēn, "to split" and "mind", in reference to a "splitting of mental functions" seen in schizophrenia, not a splitting of the personality.
• All humans learn in fundamentally similar ways. In particular, there is no evidence that people have different learning styles, or that catering teaching styles to purported learning styles improves information retention.
• The friendship paradox is the phenomenon first observed by the sociologist Scott L. Feld in 1991 that most people have fewer friends than their friends have, on average. It can be explained as a form of sampling bias in which people with more friends than the study participants have are also likelier than average to be observed among the participants' own friends. In contradiction to this, most people believe that they have more friends than their friends have.
• Self-harm is not generally an attention-seeking behavior. Many self-harmers are very self-conscious of their wounds and scars and feel guilty about their behavior, leading them to go to great lengths to conceal their behavior from others. They may offer alternative explanations for their injuries, or conceal their scars with clothing.
• Not all pedophiles commit child sexual abuse, and not all child sexual abuse is committed by pedophiles. Pedophilia is the condition of an adult being exclusively or predominantly attracted to pre-pubescent children, while child sexual abuse is the act of an adult, pedophile or not, having sexual relations with pre-pubescent children.
• There is no evidence that violent video games have any negative effects on humans ("cause people to become violent"). While there are examples of video games influencing the behavior of culprit individuals (such as the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre), studies have consistently found no link between aggression and violent video games, and the popularity of gaming has coincided with a decrease in youth violence. Nonetheless, the moral panic surrounding video games in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, alongside isolated incidents and legislation in many countries, likely contributed to proliferating this notion.

Transportation

• The Bermuda Triangle does not have any more shipwrecks or mysterious disappearances than most other waterways.
• Toilet waste is never intentionally jettisoned from an aircraft. All waste is collected in tanks and emptied into toilet waste vehicles. Blue ice is caused by accidental leakage from the waste tank. Passenger trains, on the other hand, have indeed historically flushed onto the tracks; modern trains usually have retention tanks on board and therefore do not dispose of waste in such a manner.
• Automotive batteries stored on a concrete floor do not discharge any faster than they would on other surfaces, in spite of worry among Americans that concrete harms batteries. Early batteries with porous, leaky cases may have been susceptible to moisture from floors, but for many years lead–acid car batteries have had impermeable polypropylene cases. While most modern automotive batteries are sealed, and do not leak battery acid when properly stored and maintained, the sulfuric acid in them can leak out and stain, etch, or corrode concrete floors if their cases crack or tip over or their vent-holes are breached by floods.

See also

• Conventional wisdom
• Factoid
• List of cognitive biases
• List of fallacies
• List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
• List of urban legends
• Moral panic
• Old wives' tale
• Outline of public relations
• Pseudodoxia Epidemica
• Pseudoscience
• QI
• Stereotype
• The Straight Dope
• Urban legends about drugs

Further reading

• Diefendorf, David (2007). Amazing... But False!: Hundreds of "Facts" You Thought Were True, But Aren't. Sterling. ISBN 978-1-4027-3791-6.
• Green, Joey (2005). Contrary to Popular Belief: More than 250 False Facts Revealed. Broadway. ISBN 978-0-7679-1992-0.
• Johnsen, Ferris (1994). The Encyclopedia of Popular Misconceptions: The Ultimate Debunker's Guide to Widely Accepted Fallacies. Carol Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8065-1556-4.
• Kahn, Charles H. (2001), Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans: A Brief History, Indianapolis, Indiana and Cambridge, England: Hackett Publishing Company, ISBN 978-0-87220-575-8
• Kruszelnicki, Karl; Adam Yazxhi (2006). Great Mythconceptions: The Science Behind the Myths. Andrews McMeel Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7407-5364-0.
• Lloyd, John; John Mitchinson (2006). The Book of General Ignorance. Harmony Books. ISBN 978-0-307-39491-0.
• Lloyd, John; John Mitchinson (2010). The Second Book Of General Ignorance. Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-26965-5.
• O'Conner, Patricia T.; Kellerman, Stewart (2009). Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6660-5.
• Scudellari, Megan (December 17, 2015). "The science myths that will not die". Nature. 528 (7582): 322–25. Bibcode:2015Natur.528..322S. doi:10.1038/528322a. PMID 26672537.
• Solomon, Maynard (1995). Mozart: A Life (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-019046-0. OCLC 31435799.
• Tuleja, Tad (1999). Fabulous Fallacies: More Than 300 Popular Beliefs That Are Not True. Galahad Books. ISBN 978-1-57866-065-0.
• Varasdi, J. Allen (1996). Myth Information: More Than 590 Popular Misconceptions, Fallacies, and Misbeliefs Explained!. Ballantine Books. ISBN 978-0-345-41049-8.

External links

• List of children's misconceptions about science
• Misconceptions taught by science textbooks
• Bad Science
• Bad Chemistry
• Snopes – Urban Legend Reference