People Dispel Myths That Are Still Widely Believed Today

Step on a crack. Break your mother's back. Lies. I know. I've tried. Kidding.

Cracked

"Cracking your knuckles will give you arthritis, no it won't!"

Cancer-Cinema

"I crack my fingers all the time and because I'm hyper mobile my knees crack every time I bend down more or less. But I love the feeling of it."

l52286

Fluid Scam

"Detox teas. Liver and kidneys do that for you."

BlacGirlMagik

"'Detox' is a scam warning word to me with 'cleanse' right behind it. I might be willing to believe what I'm being told about a product but the moment they use those words they've lost all credibility. The funniest experience I ever had with a product like that was a coworker telling me about this amazing drink that cleaned your intestines of waste that somehow got stuck and built up."

"The 'proof' that it worked was these long nasty looking things they crapped out after drinking this supposed miracle cure which they of course took pictures of to show everybody. I looked into it a bit and found that the primary ingredient they all used was the same as is used in gelatin. People were essentially making jello molds out of their colon and then showing off the results."

Tangent_

Greens

"Spinach has a ton of iron compared to other vegetables. The scientist missed a decimal place and he said it has 10 times as much as it really does. That’s why Popeye loves his spinach. It actually has the same amount of iron as every other green leafy vegetable."

Nettius2

On the tongue

"'Taste zones.' All taste buds are all over your tongue; there is no such thing as a 'sweet zone,' a 'sour zone,' etc."

berael

Thank goodness that knuckle one is a lie. I can't stop myself.

LIES!

"-- Caffeine stunts your growth."

"-- Pretty much any 'food pyramid' promoted by the western world prior to ~1998."

sskoog

“evidence”

"Graphology. That you can determine traits about a person by their handwriting. I did an entire research paper on it. Plenty of 'evidence' in the common sensational news, but not a single damn article or shred of evidence from the academic research area, excepting 'yeah no we tried it and didn’t find any correlations.'"

Commander_Meh

Columbus Who?

"Europeans knew the world to be round in Columbus' time. Columbus just calculated the circumference very incorrectly and is lucky there was a whole other continent to run into before he and his men ran out of supplies. To be abundantly clear, the Ancient Greeks figured it out."

"So did the Chinese, the Egyptians, the Persians, and probably the Maya and many many others. My point is that 'proving the Earth wasn't flat' is a myth. Anyone thinking the Earth was flat had nothing to do with Columbus' bid to find a westward passage to East Asia. It is a myth that people thought the world was flat in his time."

Lord0fHats

Doggie Colors

"So my ex is a vet. Dogs can actually view pretty much all of the visible light spectrum from red to blue. They just don't see colour as vividly as humans do, so they don't distinguish very well between different shades. Blue and Violet they can just make out. Indigo and violet are impossible for them to distinguish."

"See also: the difference between reds and pinks and the innumerable shades of blue, green and blue-green."

Apocryph761

Fly High

"The thing with the bumblebee technically not being able to fly because of aerodynamics. Used as a kind of motivational tale about overcoming obstacles."

"Turns out, modeling a bumblebee as a kind of plane is a bad idea, you know with the moving wings and stuff. If you think of a bumblebee as similar to a helicopter then all of a sudden the aerodynamic calculations work out and the bumblebee can fly."

Fridge_ov_doom

Blue

"Your blood is blue. C'mon people, you're saying blood turns red when exposed to oxygen, but neglect the main fact. Hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein in your red blood cells that carries oxygen to your body's organs and tissues and transports carbon dioxide from your organs and tissues back to your lungs."

"(source: https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hemoglobin-test/about/pac-20385075#:~:text=Hemoglobin%20is%20a%20protein%20in,blood%20cell%20count%20(anemia)."

wolfpack123343

Still good for you...

“'Tomatoes aren’t vegetables, they’re fruit.'"

"They’re both. They’re botanically fruit, but vegetable is not a botanical category, it’s a culinary one."

MarvelousOxman

"I just don't get why we single out tomatoes. Beans, peppers, squash, corn, and plenty of others are technically fruits, but for some reason, 'a tomato is actually a fruit' is the fun fact we teach to kids."

FutureBlackmail

Shave It

"That hair grows back darker and thicker if you shave it. Only hormones change hair consistency and color. Laser and electrolysis can do the thinning and removal. Every argument for this myth is a misconception and easily proved otherwise by those who actually know about hair and how it works."

supagirl277

Liquid

"That water has memory and feelings.. my mom believes that..."

dadika08

"If you Google 'water memory' a bunch of 'resources' will show up explaining this."

meetmyfriendme

I Debunk It

"Does the lack of scientific evidence that could prove efficacy count as debunking? If so I could point to astrology. Also, fun fact, the Reagan white house had an official astrologer that gave advice occasionally on government policies."

etherend

"Not really 'official,' but she did have way more influence on things (particularly scheduling) than many actual White House aides."

"Nancy Reagan really believed in her, so staff had to take her advice and make it seem like it came from the president's advisors, so the public wasn't aware of the astrologer's influence. Pretty weird situation altogether. Her name was Joan Quigley if you're interested in reading more about it."

Ragnarok2kx

Family Structures

"The Alpha Wolf. The guy who initially published this stuff put his entire life into disproving himself, but the myth is out here and a lot of people ate it up. From personal experience there's a lot of overlap with the bootstrap-believers."

"Wolf packs in nature are most often family structures and they're very social creatures. Here's a source: https://sciencenorway.no/ulv/wolf-packs-dont-actually-have-alpha-males-and-alpha-females-the-idea-is-based-on-a-misunderstanding/1850514"

raxeira-etterath

Man's Worst Friend

"That dogs are a good judge of character. Hitler had dogs that loved him."

BlueRFR3100

"I mean he was probably lovely to his dogs, it was every other human in existence he was an **shole towards Dogs won't care that you are a monster to millions of other human beings, as long as you treat them right - dog's can't read, or get onto twitter, so cannot form opinions of their owners based on other people."

ThatOne749

Did he give up?

"Homeotherapy. It's based on one quack theory that toxins that cause symptoms similar to symptoms from an illness, will cure you of that illness! That's not how it works. The guy who originated the theory went on to kill people with this nonsense. Did he give up? No, he was a trier."

"So he amended his theory to; a dilution of the toxin that is so dilute none of the toxin remains will cure you. Because it gets more effective the less there is! If they dilute it so much that there's no active ingredient left, they claim that the water or sugar 'remembers' the effect of the active ingredient. But only if you slap each dilution!"

"This bull is killing people today. They are forgoing effective modern medicine, because they are told sugar pills and water or alcohol drops will save them."

n3m0sum

Cheers Anyway...

"That drinking red wine is healthy. Debunked a decade ago: people who drink wine eat better than people who drink beer. Hence the first group will have a slightly better health, but that's not due to the wine. Alcohol is a poison. And I love that poison..."

Apotak

Now the truth shall set us free. Spread the good words.