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How many things have we been taught were true but aren't?

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
9,011
Location
The great American southeast
Often when I speak outside my level of expertise I'm informed that my statement is not true. Many times I've made a statement concerning science or other discipline and I've had to be straightened out. Anyone else in here have the same problem? Much of what I quote I learned in school.
 
One of the problems with trying to keep up with science and technology is that things change, and often change rapidly.
It may be that some of the things you learned earlier have since been either disproven or changed.

At 60, I can recall many things that were considered to be "cutting edge" back when I was younger, and are now hopelessly passe'.....
 
yeah i know. the 'blood is blue in your veins' thing was especially weird, I dont know how i believed it for so long.

schools are becoming less and less informative, its a shame. some REAL reform needs to happen very soon imo. especially when it comes to science.
 
I found an old geography book in our attic when I was a kid and it presented the continental drift theory as plausible. In high school science class, back in the 50s, I brought it up and was ridiculed by one of my favorite teachers.
A few years later I showed him a Scientific American article which supported the renamed theory.
 
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My 5'th grade physical science teacher and I got in a debate (a rather short one) in class. He argued that because of gravity, the Earth weighs exactly what it did millions of years ago. I pointed out meteorites and the thousands of tons of space dust that fall to Earth each year. He didn't respond.
 
I have an encyclopedia at home, can't remember the year, but the entry on Vitamins state that they "have no known nutritional value." The next time I unpack them I intend on taking a scan of that.

I remember being taught that the dinosaurs died out because the larger ones ate all the smaller ones and the food chain collapsed causing mass extinctions.
 
Jeff Corey said:
I found an old geography book in our attic when I was a kid and it presented the continental drift theory as plausible. In high school science class, back in the 50s, I brought it up and was ridiculed by one of my favorite teachers.
A few years later I showed him a Scientific American article which supported the renamed theory.
Click to expand...

I'm not surprised at all. One of my teachers in (what USAians think of as) grade school told us that one of his school books described Finnish people as "having a taste for getting mindlessly drunk and having a taste for drawing knives".

I have an encyclopedia from the mid-1920's which says that "when Africans rule, it usually results in despotism".

'Tis not that long ago we liveth in Ye Dark Ages. Question is: What will people think of us, 50 years from now?
 
I think the title of a book about it was "Lies my teacher told me". There has to be a website based on the premise.

Lessee, just re: cholesterol: shrimp is bad, eggs are DEADLY, now shrimp has NO cholesterol, and eggs are not nearly so bad.
 
I've encountered in my time as a teacher:

gravity is caused by the earth's rotation
dolphins are fish
blood is blue when deoxygenated
the tongue is divided into zones of taste
we breathe in oxygen and out carbon dioxide (no...we breathe in and out a mix of gases called 'air')

I can't be too critical, though. I know I've taught mistaken understanding once or twice. Our head of department (an amazing teacher) taught that -3 -3 is 0, only realizing her mistake when she got out of that class. Now she has to try to undo that damage.

This is why teaching critical thinking skills is so important. Kids need to be able to 'unlearn' untruths.

Athon
 
athon said:
the tongue is divided into zones of taste
Click to expand...

This is a new one I'd not yet reconsidered. I was told the "sweet" sensors were mostly at the tip, "bitter," "salty," and... oh what's the 4'th? Fire or Earth, or water... something like that. Joking aside, what studies have shown this not to be the case? I love this forum for all the things I'm UN-learning.

Great thread.

Cheers,
Brian
 
Putting hot tap water in ice cube trays makes them freeze faster than cold water from the faucet (no, they don't).

(Please, let's not discuss this again.... they DO NOT FREEZE FASTER... period. The key is hot tap water, which is around 120-140F... as opposed to near boiling which does freeze faster but produces very very small ice cubes.)

The first time I saw my wife do it, I told her she was insane.... then we bought a fridge with an ice maker.
 
Brian Jackson said:
This is a new one I'd not yet reconsidered. I was told the "sweet" sensors were mostly at the tip, "bitter," "salty," and... oh what's the 4'th? Fire or Earth, or water... something like that. Joking aside, what studies have shown this not to be the case? I love this forum for all the things I'm UN-learning.

Great thread.

Cheers,
Brian
Click to expand...

Taste is detected by the manner in which the chemicals move across the membrane of the cells on the taste buds. There are no real zones, as such, however there might be some discrepency in concentration of cells and the shape of the tongue in different areas which could make those parts somewhat more sensitive to a particular taste.

Athon
 
Brian Jackson said:
My 5'th grade physical science teacher and I got in a debate (a rather short one) in class. He argued that because of gravity, the Earth weighs exactly what it did millions of years ago. I pointed out meteorites and the thousands of tons of space dust that fall to Earth each year. He didn't respond.
Click to expand...

You were both wrong. The Earth (or any planet, for that matter) is weightless. It is in Orbit around the sun, and therefore in free-fall.:D
(Thanks, Dr. Asimov)
 
Had a middle-school math teacher tell me (in front of the class) that there was no method of calculating square roots and that it had to be done with trial and error.

If I knew then what I know now I would have told him off and walked out of the class. I knew he was wrong but didnt know that him being wrong gave me certain liberties :)
 
cloudshipsrule said:
You mean, this isn't true?
Click to expand...


nope. you know the tubes your blood shoots into when you get your blood drawn? they have a vaccum in them, so that darker red color is the color of venous blood w/o being exposed to air(people think its them shooting the blood out like that, but veins just sort of leak when you poke a hole in them so a vaccuum is needed to make the proccess quick). the blue color of veins through skin is an optical illusion.
 
I'm a "hands on" kind of guy. I don't do books too well. I tend to need to be shown tangible proof rather than be "taught" something is true.
 
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