Talk:Common misconceptions

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 2006-10-18. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Contents

[edit] I love this article

I move to vote on a consensus that this article is awesome. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.167.239.71 (talk) 06:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Meteorology

The first point about cloud formation is either simply incorrect or very poorly expressed.

How about the claim that toilet bowls are affected by the Coriolis effect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.9.52.51 (talk) 07:32, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It is under Physics. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 08:03, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] pre-deletion discussion

You said you moved bigfoot to a disputed facts section. This section is not at disputed facts, it's not in this article, and it's not in controversy. So I guess I'm asking where is it?
~ender 2003-09-20 07:20:MST

Should a person or group religious view point be called a misconception ? Smith03 17:09, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes. --Wik 17:35, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)
I agree, only if you swap Should with Could.Root4(one) 16:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Whether the "world was created in seven days" by God is an unfalsifiable hypothesis and a matter of faith. -- Smerdis of Tlön 01:07, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The creationism v evolutionism argument over how the world was created is POV stuff Graham :) 16:49, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Creationism is as good a misconception as any. This is not "POV stuff". --Wik 18:09, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)
I would have to agree with Grahama and ask Wik why he believes it to be NPOV. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:22, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I agree with Wik, Creationism requires faith and has no evidence to support the theories stated in the Bible, whereas there is plenty of evidence to support Evolution and the Big bang. Creationism is POV stuff, because you have to believe in it. Evolution doesn't require faith, it has science to support it. Balazsh (talk) 15:02, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I always hate when people say any scientific theory doesn't require "faith". Belief in evolution also requires a faith or trust in science, and that science fortifies that belief set. There is no way one person could have done all the experiments, performed all the research, etc, that support evolution, so some trust and faith of some people and/or some past historical events MUST come into play. I have faith that Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species". Can I prove it? Yes and no, depending upon who I'm proving it to. If somebody believes the world really was created yesterday and that all of our local library content, Wikipedia, etc. is a pack of lies, I'm going to have a alot of trouble proving that fact to him or her. Creationism in itself cannot be a misconception because it is a belief in a different set of axioms. (Or more bluntly, it may require an additional set of beliefs that may have higher priority over some scientific beliefs). The misconceptions come into play when faith and evidence come into conflict. Either a person believes what is scientific, or they believe what is biblical (or they need to re-interpret either or both). Things on this page should be incontrovertible, based on plain and simple facts. Where belief systems are in conflict, the core conflicting facts should be made easy to see. When that distinction is made, we've truly made an NPOV statement. A quick scan over the Evolution and Christianity sections gives me the impression that our content is sufficient to this proposition, though a more thorogh study may reveal otherwise. Root4(one) 16:40, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Look at the dates... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.118.214.224 (talk) 21:35, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussion

This page was listed on VfD on September 20.

Wikipedians in favour of deletion:

Wikipedians in favour of keeping:

Wikipedians whose position is not obvious:

[edit] Deletion discourse

Deletionist: All the items in the list are POV - you can't write neutrally on this topic. Furthermore, they're not misconceptions: they're semantic disputes or disputed facts.

Inclusionist: But I can think of NPOV misconceptions, like the Mary Celeste or "play it again Sam". People will accept that they've got a misconception on being confronted with the full details.

Deletionist: Even if there are NPOV misconceptions, the article will invariably attract POV additions: it'd be a lot of work to make this thing neutral, and keep it that way.

Inclusionist: Perhaps, but I think it'd be worth the effort. This would make a fun entry point into a range of articles, and be educational to boot.

Deletionist: In the end, it just isn't encyclopedic now, and it won't ever be encyclopedic. Let's delete it and move on.

Inclusionist: I disagree: like a butterfly, this article will turn into something beautiful. Just wait and see.

Deletionist: Nearly every article in an encyclopedia has information that someone didn't know, or was incorrect about. These pieces of trivia belong in the articles about that subject, which is where encylopedia users will look for answers to their question. If they want to learn a random fact, they can click on Random Page.

Inclusionist: It's not stated, but this entry is about "common and widespread" misconceptions, not just all possible misconceptions. Students tend to always aquire the same misconceptions. "Education by debunking" is a valid technique, especially in gradeschool physics, and this entry brings it all together in one place.

[edit] Proposed move

If my rewrite of the article sticks (ha!) then I'd like to move this thing to list of misconceptions. Objections? Martin 00:33, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No. But surrealism being an artistic movement is definitely simply a misconception, not a disputed fact. Nearly every primary source from surrealism's beginning to the present day makes this point directly, even in so many words, or indirectly, through its discussion of something completely separate from art, from its definition of surrealism, from its failure to say anything about art... This is not an honest dispute, this is not a controversy, this is a misconception plain and simple. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:24, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I disagree- I dispute it. Kurt Schwitters was a surrealist writer and visual artist. Markalexander100 02:35, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Physics

Some coments by Chris:

  • The information on bicycling is incorrect. Reading the paper from the Physical Review, one finds that the main argument of that paper was precisely the opposite of the way it was cited here. Somebody didn't actually read their sources. The rider finds it easier to steer a bicycle at high speeds: a direct result of the fact that angular momentum is a cross product, with a component that acts to push against any tilting. Higher speeds implies a higher angular momentum, whose lateral component will "push back" harder in response to a torque caused by tilting, the crux of what we describe as "gyroscopic" forces.

Some comments by Neo:

  • Gravity is actually the weakest of the four fundamental forces, at about 1 thousand trillion trillion trillion times weaker than the strong nuclear force.
    • Isn't this statement meaningless without defining both the objects, and the distance involved. At the largest scales (for instance of the order of parsecs and above) one can largely reject electromagnetic interactions, whereas one would be stupid to reject gravitational interactions. Similaly one can reject gravitational interactions at length scales of the order of nanometers, but one needs to consider electromagnetic interactions.
    • Is this even a misconception? If people know of the existence of the four fundamental forces, which is quite a high level physics concept (ask people on the street whethere they know what the strong nuclear force is...) then they know that for fundamental particles and small length scales the order of strengths differs from that at macroscopic length scales and for larger objects.
The interactions consider the strength of all charges yester they are added to near-neutrality, for a given mass and distance. Besides, you can still see stars from thousands, and galaxies from millions, of parsecs away—can you feel their gravity?? -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Some comments by Dotchan:

  • I'm fairly sure that water is colorless; it looks blue because the microparticles in the water absorbs all other colors. (Note that the blue color doesn't become visible until one has waded out to a certain depth.)
Wrong! You've aquired a widespread misconception. Water is [definitely a blue substance], and the "microparticles" which cause the color are the water molecules.--Wjbeaty 20:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
No, you're wrong. Water is hueles but not huefree. -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
What does (pure) water taste like? - Matthew238 05:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
like your tongue -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Some comments by tcsetattr:

  • Is there any justification for the statement "gravity reduces exponentially"? Sounded cooler than "quadratically"? Seems like "exponential" might be a good candidate for the List of frequently misused English words or (if it's too late) at least the List of English words with disputed usage Tcsetattr 05:53, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Fixed. -- BenRG 03:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
    • To say "gravity reduces exponentially" is very wrong. If gravity reduced exponentially, it would reduce as a^(-r) (r is distance, r is a constant) instead of as r^-2. (I may be misunderstanding what your post originally meant, however). -Arkady
    • The Inverse Square Law applies. The strength of gravity between two masses (bodies) increases as the square of the distance, and therefore the strength of gravity between two masses decreases as the inverse of the square of the distance. Arkady's response (above) is correct. - afrab_null

Some comments by fafnir: 12:19, 10 October 2006 The magnetic pole stuff is meaningless. You can take any magnet, and lable the pole 'north and south' arbitrarily. The north pole is the north magnetic pole, little magnets people carry around and call compasses have the south magnetic pole on the compass painted red and labled 'north' so people know which direction is north. The only misconception is on the author's part. Though the poles have switched in the past, throughout man's history they have remained constant enough for countless people to use them for navigation and such.

  • Meaningless? Which part? I suspect that instead you just don't understand it. "North" and "south" are defined in physics and engineering, just as "positive" and "negative" electric charges are defined. The choice of course was arbitrary, but it was made long ago and is followed by the entire science community. In the same way, you can label electrons as "positive" if you really want, but you'd be sowing confusion by violating a century-old standard. Magnetism is the same: a century-old physics standard tells us what "north" pole means. Maxwell's equations are based on negative electrons, and on "N" poles which point to the Earth's northern hemisphere. According to this standard, the geographic north part of the Earth contains a "south" type of magnetic pole, and so the end of a magnet which points towards it must be a "north" pole. Any authors which say the opposite are wrong: wrong in the same way as if they had said that protons carry a negative charge. --Wjbeaty 08:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

in the section on electricty, the theory of relativity is quoted as to why electrons cannot move at the speed of light, but isnt that why we have quantum physics, because when you get down to atomic and subatomic particles, the theory of relativity no longer applies, hence the search for a uniform theory of realitivity, that works for both regular items and atomic and smaller particles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 214.13.212.26 (talk) 05:21, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

Hosepipe:"It is not true that a nozzle (or a person's thumb) on the end of a garden hose makes the water squirt farther because of the Bernoulli principle. The pressure at the end of a hose depends very much on the speed of the water which flows through miles of pipe. ". I don't agree with this - i think simple force/area pressure. I don't have access to the reference, but there is: http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/hose.html and https://www2.hcmut.edu.vn/~huynhqlinh/olympicvl/tailieu/physlink_askexpert/ae185.cfm.htm.

I'm also slightly concerned about a paragraph just about beginning "Due to Archimedes's principle,"; there are lots of details but no references, I'm feeling possibly politically motivated as it stands. Or, very interesting indeed if true.

Apologies for any poor wikiquette, I'm very new.--Davini994 (talk) 23:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Some comments by smcanby:

  • Regarding "Hosepipe" above: Both references sited are fundamentally flawed by the fact that they assume that the RATE of water flow is the same with both a "squirting" and "non-squirting" hose.
  • It can be demonstrated by experiment that the RATE of flow is less for the "squirting" hose than the "non-squirting" by using a bucket and stopwatch. Time how long it takes to fill the bucket using the two methods (without changing the spigot). The "squirting" hose method takes longer.
  • There is another flaw in the reference https://www2.hcmut.edu.vn/~huynhqlinh/olympicvl/tailieu/physlink_askexpert/ae185.cfm.htm.: When the hose is turned on, water will be released, and will go a distance depending on this pressure and the opening area of the hose. (Partially WRONG) The distance that water will travel is dependent ONLY upon the pressure, NOT the opening area of the hose. This can also be demonstrated by experiment. Using a bucket, drill two holes of different sizes in the side at the same elevation from the bottom (e.g. a 5 mm hole and a 10 mm hole). Plug both holes with your fingers and fill the bucket (this may require an assistant). Unplug the holes and notice that although the larger hole has a higher RATE, both holes will "squirt" the same distance.

Smcanby (talk) 23:56, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

So, should this "misconception" be removed as well? (Don't have time to check up on this at the moment). Root4(one) 05:02, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Health

In this article, it is told that cold weather can decrease the strenght of the immune system and thus facilitate the common cold. But in the "Old wives' tale" article, the opposite is told: cold weather and decreased immunity have no correlation. At least one of them is wrong.

Deleted the following: BEGIN

[edit] Colds and 'Flu

Main article: Common cold
  • Exposure to cold conditions, or the moving between cold and warm environments, is not a cause of the Common cold or Influenza. Moreover, the development of colds and 'flu are not encouraged by such exposure. Cold weather often forces humans to congregate indoors, which encourages the spreading of airborne viruses. (Long term exposure to cold conditions can, however, lead to Hypothermia, which is a much more serious problem)
  • Infection with a cold virus affects thermogenesis. This makes people associate post-infection shivering with situations in which they were exposed to cold that intensifies shivering (e.g. wet hair, draft, long wait on a bus stop, etc.). This association helps propagate the myth.
  • A cold virus often irritates nasal passages and encourages sneezing. Sneezing can also be caused by other conditions, notably exposure to colder air temperatures. Cold weather can thus cause sneezing, but sneezing is not necessarily an indication that a person has "caught a cold".
  • If cold weather were directly linked to the spread of the common cold, then it could possibly be demonstrated by comparing the infection rates of people who live in colder climates (such as Iceland or Greenland) with people who live in warmer climates (such as countries close to the equator). Studies done in the 1960s found no significant increase in infection rates in people who live in colder climates.
  • One reason why so many people link exposure to cold weather to "catching a cold" is via a logical fallacy which assumes that Correlation implies causation. Colds are certainly more prevalent during colder periods of the year, but it is wrong to assume that the two are directly linked.
  • The "Correlation implies causation" fallacy can also apply to popular treatments for colds and flu symptoms, whereby a sufferer associates their improving health to certain cold remedies, when in fact their improving health would have occurred with or without these remedies. Popular remedies can also have a "Placebo effect", whereby a person who believes in a certain treatment "feels" better as a result. Some of these popular treatment are:
  • Echinacea. Scientific studies into the effects of Echinacea have shown no measurable positive effect on those suffering from colds or 'flu.
  • Vitamin C. Vitamin C can reduce the incidence of colds amongst physically stressed people by up to 50%. Amongst ordinary people, a 200mg daily dose had no effect whatsoever in reducing the incidence of colds.
  • Zinc lozenges. A 1999 study showed that the effects of zinc lozenges for treating the common cold are inconclusive.
For further information, including external links and references, please click on the links provided.

END

The above is original research, and also wrong, or at least heavily debated. From the common cold page: "a rhinovirus cannot survive at elevated temperatures for more than a few minutes.[8] Because of this weakness, the rhinovirus infects the outer membranes of the throat and sinuses, where it is not exposed to normal human body temperature."

In the winter, the extremities are more likely to be cold. Is it winter? Touch your nose. Bingo. Also:

"It is not known conclusively whether cold weather or a humid climate can affect transmission by other means, such as by affecting the immune system, or ICAM-1 receptor concentration, or simply increasing the amount and frequency of nasal secretions and frequency of hand to face contact."

"researchers at the Common Cold Centre at the Cardiff University attempted to demonstrate that cold temperatures can lead to a greater susceptibility to viral infection. In the experiment, 29% of a group of 90 people who sat with their feet in ice-cold water for 20 minutes a day for five days developed cold symptoms during the five days, while 9% of a control group of 90 people who were not similarly exposed developed symptoms."

This page is hardly the place for stuff that's open to debate. If scientists are still asking questions about whether it is the case or not, then it is clearly not a "misconception" it is "not yet established". DewiMorgan 19:45, 13 May 2007 (UTC) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4433496.stm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.86.248.180 (talk) 01:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Also see http://www.medpagetoday.com/Pulmonary/URIstheFlu/tb/2136. This states that "many of us carry around a subclinical cold infection and that chilling the feet opens the door for it to become a full-blown cold.". So exposure to cold temperatures clearly does lead to one developing a cold. This clearly is not a misconception. The comments about colds should be removed from the page.--81.106.184.50 (talk) 20:31, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Quotations to misquotes

Shouldn't the misquotes from the "Entertainment" section be moved to the article List of famous misquotations? --153.1.150.24 10:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be tempted to leave the Casablanca (apologies about my spelling) fact in there as it is so famous as a misconception, and add a link to the misquotations page for the others, removing the others. --Neo 16:49, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why the sky is blue

Some believe that the sky looks blue because it reflects the ocean...

Who are those fools?! This is a list about "common misconceptions", not "misconceptions held by a tiny minority of people who probably think the moon is made of cheese as well".

I hope there aren't people who believe the sky over a desert is yellow, because it reflects the sand. Psychonaut3000 03:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

It is quite widespread. Explanation I was given as a kid was that the earth, in general, is a blue/white sphere when seen from space; the average colour is blue. In the same way Mars' atmosphere is thought of as red. (Note: the sky over the desert can well be yellower than that over the sea, due to dust particles, which to the naïve might appear to support the ground-reflecting hypothesis). DewiMorgan 12:18, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Dewi here, this misconception is held by a surprisingly large amount of people, and so should still remain on the list, regardless of whether the initial theory sounds silly. --Balazsh (talk) 14:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I was told this repeatly by people who acted like they knew what they were talking about, so since I didn't have a better explanation, I believed until today! ike9898 (talk) 16:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Delete this indiscriminate list?

This appears to be an indiscriminate list, I strongly urge deleting the entire ugly mess. However, it seems I just missed the deletion debate by a few days... Can we get some honorable, capable editor to merge the content back into the articles where this stuff belongs, and after this article has been whittled down, delete this thing for good? linas 15:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea at this time. An AFD was closed the day before you made that comment. --70.48.174.110 00:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

There's a reference to pirates that needs five different citations. Its just not needed on the list, I mean complete accuracy is a hope but little more, But we can only go so far. As well I don't think its accurate, I have read several good (historical, non-fiction) books on pirates and privateering and was always lead to believe that well the jolly roger was different in many ways from ship to ship it still existed. Regardless, I can't stand looking at a three sentence paragraph with five needed citations. Colin 8 20:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC) "An old (and surely dying) superstition is that toads can give people warts" that its old and a superstition is indisputable, but whether its dying is opinion and little more, I am removing the bracketed info.Colin 8 20:18, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution

I want to propose merging the Evolution section with the Biology section on this same page. I am just unsure of how to format the template. The Evolution section might get a separate subheader but it really belongs under Biology. Cthompson (talk) 03:54, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I love this page :) I added a whole swathe on evolution, but now I'm thinking maybe this should be copied to the evolution page itself. These misapprehensions about evolution are, so far as I can tell, the only reason it is not universally accepted. [edit: Oops forgot to sign]DewiMorgan 22:32, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm going to try to pare down the list. As it is, it seems somewhat redundant and inaccurate. --Allen 03:30, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I ended up only making some small changes... after doing that I think the bigger problem is that most of the points aren't shown to be common misconceptions in the first place (in fact, I think that's a serious problem with much of this article). I'll plan to wait a while and then remove points that don't have a source to demonstrate that they're misconceptions, unless it seems to me that they obviously are. --Allen 03:39, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
How I should prove the evolutionary misconceptions are such. I could link to many forum discussions on the topic where people are being blatantly wrong on each of the points, but I think that showing the poor people in those forums to be retarded would be immoral. I don't think there have been many scientific papers on what the common evolutionary misconceptions are, so I'm not sure that kind of references I should give. I guess maybe Intelligent Design sites? But the idea of using those sites as a reference, even as a reference for wrong-thinking, turns my stomach. As it is, as someone who has been in many discussions on evolution, I find it hard to tell which of the list are not "obviously" misconceptions: I've seen them all, countless times. Also, it seems that someone added a similar section to the evolutionary basics page, so I suspect that they are pretty common. DewiMorgan
One of the items in this section is unclear: "Evolution is a "theory" in the same way as the theories of gravity, thermodynamics, etc.", stated as fact, which I believe it is. It continues: ""The word "theory" has a different meaning in a scientific context than in a casual, which may have lead to this misunderstanding." The first part is another fact, but then the sentence ends referring to "this misunderstanding", but... what exactly is the misunderstanding? It's never mentioned. Retodon8 14:41, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Good call - I prepended "Some believe that as Evolution is a "theory", it is merely a hypothesis, rather than a proven fact of life." to clarify. DewiMorgan 17:52, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


Made some changes. In particular, I returned the two sections:

  • Evolution does not happen within just one creature: you need the entirety of a population to observe evolution. You need some of them to breed, and some not to.

You hear this one so often it's painful: definitely a misconception/strawman, but which one to link to as a ref?

  • Evolution is not progress from "lower" to "higher". In that sense, "Evolution" is a misnomer.

Same again. Not so much a question of whether it's a misconception, but rather, link to use to show that it is?

Also did some cleaning up, added a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_misconceptions#Evolution and so on.DewiMorgan 18:47, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there was a real article here at one time, a fork of evolution, called Misconceptions about evolution or something similar. It was deleted I believe, but still might be retrieved and mined potentially. Some of this material is ok, but some of it needs some editing and pruning and correction, in both the evolution section and the other sections.--Filll 16:26, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Please clarify in the article what counts as a mutation in the following statement: The claim that "almost all mutations are harmful" is false. In fact, most mutations have no noticeable effect. One study gives the average number of mutations that arise in a human conception to be around 128, with an average number of harmful mutations per conception of 1.3 --Adoniscik (talk) 19:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spaghetti Bolognese

Spaghetti Bolognese did not originate in Italy. [citation needed]

This is not supported by the current article on SB or anything else I have ever read. Perhaps it is a confusion based on the well attested fact that "Bolognese sauce" is called ragu in Bologna.1Z 16:16, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

"Spaghetti bolognese did not originate in Italy. The actual name in Italian is spaghetti con ragù, which means spaghetti with ragù. Spaghetti bolognese is actually the German name." FALSE. First of all, the common way of saying is "spaghetti AL ragù" not "spaghetti CON ragù". Moreover, "ragù" is a meat sauce that can be done in many ways, and "ragù alla bolognese" is one of them. You can say "Spaghetti alla bolognese" (omitting the preposition is an error) to mean "Spaghetti (al|con) ragù alla bolognese". Writing from Italy, not that far from Bologna :) Barabba 14:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Uncertainty principle

Would this article benefit from a discussion of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which is often misinterpreted to mean "everything is uncertain" is some sweeping way. 1Z 16:25, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coriolis formula

I have removed the formula -\frac{1}{3}(\frac{2h}{g})^{3/2}g\Omega\cos{\lambda} from the section on the Coriolis force affecting bathtub draining.

  • The formula is for an object falling vertically; but weather, ocean currents, missiles and draining water move horizontally.
  • The equation predicts a maximum effect at the equator, λ = 0, whereas the effect on drains and weather would change sign (be zero) there.
  • The text makes the assertion that cosλ is a maximum at λ=1, which is false.

Spiel496 16:10, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Native Americans/Aborigines couldn't see the Europeans' ships

What about adding this misconception - that 'uncivilised' peoples couldn't see the Europeans' ships because they didn't have the concept for it? I've heard this idiocy from various intelligent British people.Malick78 07:46, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's a common misconception, so probably isn't appropriate for this list. It's a misconception solely of those who've uncritically swallowed certain ideas from the postmodern cultural studies movement. Furthermore, as I'm British, I feel honour-bound to point out that this misconception is not by any stretch confined to the United Kingdom.  ;-) The article on the Sokal Affair should illuminate those less familiar with this particular streak of postmodern craziness. --Plumbago 07:59, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Emancipation proclamation & Black hole

The change to the Emancipation Proclamation is wrong (I know) in it’s reasoning "did not immediately free all American slaves because it took winning the civil war to bring those slaves under his authority": it did not free any slaves that were not in rebellious states: those that did not rebel and had slaves were under his authority but did not have their slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. - unsigned

Yes, you are right; but I was trying to fix the idea that it was supposed to free slaves not under Union control. I'll go back and make sure both our important qualifiers are clear. WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

The change to the black hole is wrong (I think) in it’s reference to the sun (which is in sol), and is not in appropriate reference to the star itself.- unsigned

"The sun's radius" was wrong, but so was "Schwarzschild radius". I changed "sun's" to "star's". BenRG (talk) 22:40, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I meant to write "star"; thanks for fixing that. WAS 4.250 (talk) 23:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Missing a few.

Where is Iraq? More than 50% of Americans still believe that Iraq and Saddam were some how involved in 9/11. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.134.164.46 (talk) 01:53, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah, yeah, we'll always be missing a few. But the question I have is how true is that statement? AFAIK, It's a pretty old stat, more than a few Americans have probably figured out the lack of connection. It may be misconceived that this statement is still true! But I doubt I'll be opposed to you adding it. However, we may need to create a section for it (or maybe place it under History?
BTW, just a thought, related to the subject line. There's no "Mathematics" or "Statistics" sections either. I'm sure there's hundreds we could possibly add (and unfortunately only a few that we ought or should add). Anybody want to get their copy of Innumeracy or How to Lie with Statistics and start plugging away at this? (I may if I get free time later today). Root4(one) 17:00, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What is this?!? (Physics Gravity problem)

  • That all objects, irrespective of their masses, fall at the same rate in a vacuum (i.e. ignoring air resistance) is only true for masses small in comparison with the mass of the Earth. The effect of gravity depends on the sum of all masses involved, and not just on the mass of the heaviest object. In other words, a hammer dropped from a tower has a greater mass than a pebble dropped from the same tower, which means that the Earth moves towards the hammer faster than it moves towards the pebble and, relative to the surface of the Earth, the hammer will be very slightly faster. If both objects are dropped in the same place at the same time, this will not apply. Nor would it apply if the unused object was left at the base of the tower (since it would then effectively add its mass to the mass of the earth).

Who came up with this? This makes no sense to me (zero). I have removed it from the article. I insist this be explained to me before I place it back on the article. THAT, or this is badly written. One suggestion:

The effect of gravity depends on the sum of all masses involved, and not just on the mass of the heaviest object.

Who would say it did? Maybe what is meant is:

The effect of gravity depends on the sum of all forces involved, and not just on the forces of all objects interacting with the heaviest object.

But even so, I'm not sure I buy the rest of it. The force required for moving the pebble is less than that for the hammer, but F=ma still applies AFAIK, so I don't see the rest of the argument is accurate. I might can see some sort of Three-Body argument, but ??. If a pebble, the earth, and the sun are all collinear with no momentum, would the argument even apply? Or what about three earths? Somebody please explain! Thanks. Root4(one) 04:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I was a little irked by that entry, so I partially rewrote it. I have no particular interest in seeing it put back on the list, but it's actually true. I don't think it really qualifies as a common misconception though, because the "misconception" is only wrong for unrealistically heavy objects. It's a little like saying it's a misconception that your watch still works when you're on a train, because it slows down due to special relativity. Technically it's true that the watch slows down, but the change is far smaller than matters or can be measured. In the same way, although it's very accurate to say that (air resistance aside) all objects fall at the same rate, technically, a heavier object will hit the ground sooner. It can be verified with very basic physics. I will explain it briefly, but if you don't understand, that is not grounds for insisting the entry not be reinstated (again, I won't be the one to put it back).
Here is the deal: If two massive objects are released in each other's vicinity, they accelerate toward each other; each object accelerates at a rate determined by the gravitational field it experiences, which is proportional to the mass of the other object. Theoretically, that is what happens when you drop an object: the object accelerates toward the Earth, and the Earth accelerates toward the object until they collide. Any object that someone might drop has a tiny mass in comparison with the Earth, so the acceleration of the Earth is negligible, and all objects fall at the same rate. But if you were to drop something heavy enough, it would hit the ground sooner, because the Earth would move up to meet it. As an example, if you dropped an incredibly heavy marble that had the same mass as the Earth, Earth and marble would fall toward each other, and meet exactly in the middle. A regular marble would have twice as far to fall, and would take 1.4 times as long to collide with the Earth when dropped from the same height.Rracecarr (talk) 05:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It should remain in the article. The combined mass is what gives the force of gravity on both objects. If the mass of the lighter object increases, the force of gravity bulling each object towards each other increases. Since the mass of the heavier object hasn't increased, it will come at a higher acceleration. This is well known fact. Only when the mass is extremely large such that the combined mass of the objects remains vertially same do they actually fall at the same speed. This is completely seperate to time dilation in a gravity field and is very important. For example if there was another earth they would fall towards each other faster than a basketball falls toward the earth. To think that they would not would be to make gravity constant. Think about it, if you increase the mass of the earth, surely you can agree gravity increases (think about gravity of jupiter). Likewise increasing the mass of the falling object will increase the 'gravity' between the objects and it will fall faster.--Dacium (talk) 06:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
(dratted edit conflicts)
We commonly teach first years to treat acceleration due to gravity as a constant 9.8 metres per second (32 ft/s) one week, and then the next week tell them that the force due to gravity is the product of the masses divided by the separation squared. This ideally leads the students into a greater understanding of experimental accuracy and useful approximations. In practice, however, they all too often erroneously conclude that Newton's third law (action = reaction) is bunk. The bit about summing masses is, as {1,i,-1,-i} notes, plainly wrong. Below is proposed a hopefully more lucid explanation of this misconception. Universal gravitation and g can be cited to any intro physics text, but not really the misconception itself, I do not suppose. It might also be worth noting that anyone citing this misconception is being entirely too pedantic for their own good - anyone actually trying to calculate this would be using GR, not Newtonian gravity. Eldereft (talk) 06:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
Have to butt in and correct Eldereft here. The original poster was correct: the relative acceleration (that is, the rate of change of the speed with with they approach each other) of any two masses separated by a given distance depends only on the sum of the masses: a + A = G(m + M)/r². Rracecarr (talk) 16:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't know that you're actually correcting either of us. The orignal statement of contention was "The effect of gravity depends on the sum of all masses involved". This is part of the nonsense I was refering to. But judging from the other comments, I can see your statement about the acceleration between objects (i,j) looks to be true.
It looks like we can judge that
Let \vec F_i be the vector force acting on object i
let \vec F_{m_i,m_i} be the individual force acting on object i resulting from object j.
let mi be the mass of object i
let ai be the overall acceleration vector (I'd call this "the effect of gravity"). This is not the relative acceleration between objects i and j, as Rracecarr's equation works.
let di,j be the distance between object i and object j
let ri,j be the (vector) direction of the force between individual objects i and j. (mean, forces have direction, right?)
\vec F_1 = \vec F_{m_1,m_2} + \vec F_{m_1,m_3}
\vec F_1 = \vec r_{1,2} G m_1 m_2 /d^2_{1,2} + \vec r_{1,3} G m_1 m_3 /d^2_{1,3}
\vec a_1 = \vec F_1/m_1 = G (\vec r_{1,2}m_2/d^2_{1,2} + \vec r_{1,3}m_3/d^2_{1,3})
\vec a_i = \vec F_i/m_i = G \sum^n_{j=1} [i<>j](\vec r_{i,j}m_j/d^2_{i,j})
Judging from above, I guess you could call it a weighted vector sum, so I guess it is a sum of masses of sorts, but I'd call that an abuse of language. "Linearly determined" may be better. I don't know.
Ok, it looks like we can conclude (and all agree) that Galileo's law of gravitation is, in fact, not quite right. We could call this a misconception (Aristotle was right after all! Hee). But the difference is so slight (Google says the mass of the mass of Earth = 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms, anybody got 10^24 kg of stuff lying around? how about 10^23? Oh come on, somebody has got to have something 1/50 the size of the earth somewhere....!)practically unmeasurable for most things of interest except those on the cosmic scale. I could buy placing something relating to these statements on the page... if we also include some statement as to what distances, what size or relative masses, etc make it the facts relevant. Rracecarr's formula a + A = G(m + M)/r² looks like a good starting point. I'll think about it. Root4(one) 22:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Rracecarr, you edited the entry? Is that the entry at the top of this section that you edited? It looks different. Can we use that as a starting point? Thanks. Root4(one) 22:40, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Here is the diff showing my (minor) edit to the entry before it was deleted. I don't know what you mean by abuse of language. But let's cut to the chase: Is there anyone here who is actually interested in seeing the entry go back in? I'm against it. Partly because you could frame an equally valid "misconception" as follows: It's not true that all masses fall at the same rate, because if you pick up a heavier mass, you effectively subtract its mass from the mass of the Earth, reducing the value of g, so that (in an inertial frame) heavier objects actually fall slower. Rracecarr (talk) 23:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
I won't add it for a while (not this weekend at least). I may just leave it for now. Root4(one) 23:55, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


  • That objects falling near sea level reach the ground at the same time independent of mass (neglecting air resistance) is only approximately correct. The gravitational force between any two objects is given by Newton's law of universal gravitation, which may be set equal to each object's mass times its acceleration:
G \frac{m_1 m_2}{r^2} = m_ia_i
for each mass mi. While the force felt by each object depends on the product of their masses, the acceleration each mass experiences is given entirely by the other mass and the separation between the two. The movement of the Earth upwards towards their common center of mass as various objects are dropped is entirely negligible. When the distance traversed is small compared to Earth's radius, this gives a constant acceleration, g, independent of mass.
I see enough people confuse themselves by reasoning that doubling either mass doubles the force between them (true) means dropping a heavy object is like throwing a light object downwards (not so true) that I would like to see it reinstated, but only if it actually meets the bar as a common misconception. Eldereft (talk) 07:11, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
It is still true that, near the surface of the earth, all objects, irrespective of their masses, fall at the same rate (i.e. with an acceleration of g) in a vacuum relative to an inertial frame of reference. If the mass of the falling object is significant compared to the mass of the Earth then the Earth's own acceleration is not negligible and so an observer on the surface of the Earth is no longer in an inertial frame of reference. Omitting the qualification "relative to an inertial frame of reference" is not really a misconception. At most, it is an oversimplification - but then again, we are ignoring air resistance, the rotation of the Earth, the oblateness of the Earth, the Moon's gravity, local gravity anomalies, tidal forces and relativistic corrections, so there is a lot of simplification already going on. Gandalf61 (talk) 14:14, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I originally added this and, although it is a common misconception, I'm certainly not going to make a fuss about its removal. Nevertheless, I would make the following points:
  • The watch/train analogy isn't really correct - if people know about Einstein's theories, they generally know about what happens to a watch on a train. However, this misconception can be prevalent even when people are aware of the basic interactions between different masses.
  • It is a fairly complicated notion to phrase in a simple way. For example, dropping both objects side-by-side would not demonstrate this effect, nor would leaving one object at the base of any hypothetical tower.
Tomandlu (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Evolution falsifiability

"The claim that evolution is not scientific since it cannot be falsified is not true. Any number of discoveries could potentially falsify evolution - for example the discovery of a contemporary mammal fossil in ancient rock strata."

While I understand the reason for having this common Creationist saw on here, it is not handled well at all. Falsifiability is major difficulty in the philosophy of science with regards to evolution. Even Sir Karl Popper agonized over it and in the end decided that evolution just wasn't a theory itself but an overarching umbrella concept that could lead to theories and thus wasn't subject to the same issues as a strict theory. Anyway, I don't think it should be on here unless it is handled a bit better, and in this case the standard pro-Evolution sites are often very philosophically weak. Whether it is falsifiable or not, and whether that matters or not in this case, is more complicated than can just be summed up in a sentence (a lot of it depends on what you mean by "evolution"—common descent? natural selection? modern synthesis?). See, for example, Falsifiability#Evolution. I find the "find a modern fossil in the Precambrian" personally rather unconvincing (even though I believe in evolution): that's not a "test" that you can run, and there are many ways you can imagine evolution to be false without that condition ever appearing. But anyway it's not really about what I think. --24.147.86.187 (talk) 16:04, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually Popper later recanted and admitted that he had made a mistake when he first said evolution was not falsifiable, as I am sure you know. We have some material on the falsifiability of evolution already in a couple of articles (Falsifiability, and Objections to evolution) as you noted.
However I am preparing a far more extensive discussion about why falsifiability is a bankrupt concept that has long been discarded in the philosophy of science, and a failed attempt to solve the demarcation problem, and has been especially worthless and misused in biology, with a checkered history.
I am compiling a list of many many more examples of falsifiability tests of evolution from the literature, with references. Evolution is clearly falsifiable, and creationism could be falsifiable, and has been falsified plenty already. However, creationists refuse to admit they are wrong they just add on more epicycles to maintain the same basic idea of the biblical literalism.
Evolution on the other hand, has been drastically revised with all its base tenets discarded several times, from Lamarckian ideas to Transmutation to Orthogenesis to Darwinian natural selection to the Modern evolutionary synthesis to the current more sophisticated understanding. However, for this short article, just a short note is appropriate; what would make it better is a cited reference.--Filll (talk) 22:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Technology

BeanShell is not a Java interpreter, but rather a scripting language on its own. Janino would be a better example: it's a third-party library that can compile Java source code on the fly. If we want to get specific, all languages are interpreted by a human/machine. The term "interpeted" is used loosely in this case. IMO this point is pretty misleading and should be removed altogether.76.67.53.28 (talk) 04:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Earthworms - add if you can confirm

I think it is a common misconception in the US that if you cut an earthworm in half, both halves survive and become independent worms. ike9898 (talk) 16:06, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


Maybe earthworms, which are annelids, can't do this, but planaria, which are flatworms, can. "Worm" is ambiguous. Audiosqueegee (talk) 22:27, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] 10%

The commonplace statement "We only use 10% of our brain" is completely false. I don't have any citations for this off the top of my head - nothing that explicitly contradicts this statement - but it's quite clear to me, and most likely anyone else who studies the brain. Fuzzform (talk) 01:03, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes this is from the first measurements of glial cells in the brain.--Filll (talk) 20:06, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Antarctica accumulating snow

The article claims "Antarctica may even help offset rising sea level by accumulating more snow," this is untrue as Antarctica is an arid desert with almost no precipitation (which is ironically later stated in the article). --NEMT (talk) 03:19, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

You can't deny that lots of ice certainly *has* accumulated on top of the Antarctic land mass. I have no idea if Antarctica is currently accumulating more snow *now* (very slowly of course) than it is shedding as icebergs. Do you know whether rising sea levels will tilt the balance towards greater accumulation or greater loss of ice in Antarctica? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 07:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] light vs sound

The following bullet point has been cut out of the article, with the edit summary "This looks like complete nonsense to me":

  • It is not true that a difference between light and sound is that light travels in straight lines while sound travels around corners; both waves propagate in much the same way. Instead, the difference is between ears and eyes: because human vision allows us to pinpoint the source of light entering the eye, while ears cannot accurately pinpoint the source of a sound, much more of the available information is lost when light scatters around a corner than when sound does.

I think this is trying to state that both photons and sound waves show diffraction phenomenon, which is true. Or is this controversial or disputed for some other reason? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 07:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I see two problems with it. One is that it completely misses the big difference between (audible) sound and (visible) light, which is wavelength. It's the wavelength that makes light more directional than sound, not our sensory organs. The second problem is that I don't see a common misconception here. I think people mostly understand that light is a wave. Light is more directional than sound (for the ordinary English meanings of the words, not the physicist's meanings), so that can't be called a misconception. I'm not the one who made the edit, by the way. -- BenRG (talk) 12:26, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

There are lots of differences between sound and light. For example:

  • sound can have a longitudinal component, but light does not.
  • light has a special role in our current understanding of physics, with the speed of light being a speed limit for the universe of sorts, and appearing as a scaling and conversion factor for example
  • one is a mechanical oscillation that needs a medium to travel in, while the other is an electromagnetic disturbance that can travel in a vacuum
  • the wavelength argument is sort of spurious, except for the wavelengths that humans are sensitive to.
  • the statement about not determining the source of the light or sound does not make any sense to me. If I stand outside and feel the sun on my skin, I know which direction it is coming from even without using my eyes. I can see the direction the sunlight is coming from as well if I use my eyes of course. If a loud sound occurs, everyone will turn towards the source of the sound if both ears are functioning. In both cases, if the waves reflect, refract and diffract sufficiently, it is no longer possible to tell the source of the waves with unaided human senses--Filll (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Filll that there many differences between sound and light, some of them major differences. The above "nonsense" statement is (if I understand it correctly) merely saying that, while there are many differences between them in reality, many people incorrectly think there is one more difference between them.

For example, all but one of the diagrams on the Lens (optics) article show light shooting in straight lines like a bullet -- lines that turn sharp corners at glass-to-air transition surfaces. If that is the only kind of diagram one ever saw, then one might come to the misconception that light always travels in straight lines through the air or through a vacuum. Then later being confronted by evidence that photons somehow "turn" in midair (diffraction), somewhat like sound waves "turn" in midair going around a corner, would be baffling. (But not quite as baffling as the single-particle double-slit experiment, which shows single particles somehow going through 2 different slits at the same time, or Wheeler's delayed choice experiment).

I hope that makes sense. (-: Or does this sound more like a Chewbacca defense? :-) Perhaps there is a better way of re-stating the essence of this statement? --68.0.124.33 (talk) 06:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I originally added the entry. I do think it is a very common misconception, but it mostly exists in people's intuition so there aren't a lot of concrete examples. BenRG is right to point out the difference in wavelength--audible sounds have wavelengths about a million times longer than visible light. That effects how far evanescent waves penetrate, and also diffraction patterns. Reflection and absorption coefficients of various materials are also of course different for light and sound (light goes through sound-proof glass, sound goes through a black curtain). But (contrary to BenRG) in the context of human perception, these differences are small compared to those caused by the different way the ears and eyes work. If the TV is on in the living room, and you're around the corner in the kitchen, you can still hear what's being said, but you can't see what's happening on the screen. People assume that's because light rays go straight and sound rays don't. That's the misconception. The sound gets to you mostly by bouncing off walls (ok, unlike the light, some makes it through the walls, and some via the evanescent wave sneaking around the corner--but MOST of it is by reflection). The light from the screen gets to you the same way (and the fraction of the sound energy reaching you is similar to the fraction of light energy). But because the information in the light depends on resolving spatial patterns on the screen, it's useless once it's just a vague flicker spread out all over the walls. Since your ears don't care where the sound is coming from, you can still understand speech even after it is similarly "spread out all over the walls".
The differences between transverse and longitudinal waves, medium vs no medium are not really relevant. As nearly perfectly nondispersive waves, both light and sound are governed by essentially the same wave equation. Rracecarr (talk) 16:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Please review section on Islam

I know little about Islam and I have no interest in arguing about it, but the section on Islam obviously needs attention from someone familiar with the subject. For example, the statement "Muslim martyrs will not go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins." is clearly not encyclopedic the way it is written. This is the sort of thing that needs to be quickly fixed, or dropped. I don't feel qualified to fix it myself. ike9898 (talk) 14:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The existence of heaven or any kind of afterlife is, itself, a common misconception. Whether people believe they'll receive virgins, white grapes, or nothing there is irrelevant. --NEMT (talk) 02:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Don't be ridiculous. Such a thing can not be determined one way or another- I'm fairly certain that you have no personal experience which would allow you to make such a claim. The concept is such that we really cannot be certain of the existence of such a place until we have experienced it ourselves.--C.Logan (talk) 12:51, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Please refrain from starting off-topic discussions NEMT. This page is for discussing how to improve the article, not for venting your personal beliefs. Ike, I'll have a little look around the Islam projects and see if I can find a friendly-looking editor. Skittle (talk) 15:17, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Page of Random Trivia

While mildly interesting to read, isn't this just a page of random trivia? There's no observable theme throughout the article, other than being a list of 'commonly' held misconceptions. If all such misconceptions were listed, the page would be virtually endless, and I also have serious doubts that anyone can truly verify what is a 'commmonly' held misconception. At the very least, I suspect this page will be a Western-centric list of trivia that certain editors find interesting, rather than a page of any encyclopaedic value. Blaise Joshua (talk) 12:49, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Talking of which, why are so many entries unsourced? Unless something is done to correct this, this really is Wikipedia at its worst and most unrealiable. Although I would question the validity of this article existing in any form, surely while it is up every single 'fact' should be sourced. Otherwise it's just a collection of unverified trivia. This page really does need attention. Could we please enter into some kind of discussion regarding these points. Blaise Joshua (talk) 09:39, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Why has the above not been addressed, in particular the fact that many entries are unsourced? Is it in the hope that this will sneak under the radar and that we all know such unsourced trivia shouldn't be on Wikipedia? I'm sure that's not the case, but this needs to be addressed and sorted out. Any entries that cannot be reliably cited should be removed. Blaise Joshua (talk) 08:27, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
Then remove it. No sense in repeatedly posting that unsourced information needs removed. If it needs to be, remove it. ~QuasiAbstract (talk/contrib) 12:34, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

i'll take sometime later in the week to ind citations for those without -Ishmaelblues —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ishmaelblues (talk • contribs) 18:03, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I was giving people a chance to respond and, more importantly, to reference material that they've added. I'm not one for unilateral action : o ) 86.45.193.55 (talk) 12:56, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I had noticed that you had been posting these for about a week, plenty of time for people to at least say they're going to look for cites. In any case, a {{fact}} tag could have been placed on each of the items that need to be cited. Seems to me that if after over a week of posting without response, it's no longer a unilateral decision, as people have made their choice by not responding...but that's just me. ~QuasiAbstract (talk/contrib) 13:03, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
I'm leaving gaps between deleting unsourced material. For those that are putting them back in (two, I think), saying that's it's easy to source, could you please just go ahead and source them. I don't know where the sources for these things are - if you're saying that you do know where they are and they're easy to find, then it's nice and easy for you to do them. As for the sources being in links, surely that's not good enough. Why should any casual reading of Wikipedia have to go searching for verification that what they read is true? It should be sourced right there! Blaise Joshua (talk) 17:18, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I replaced the thing about the moon's phases not being caused by the shadow of the Earth. That is such common knowledge that I'm not even sure it needs to be sourced. Even so, some children's science books get this wrong, so I think it's appropriate to include it. If you're looking for sources, you could check out the Moon article. Rracecarr (talk) 18:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)
I've no problem with points being replaced, but what you say doesn't really make any sense. If it's such common knowledge, why is it on a page about common misconceptions? For persons like me who have very little scientific knowledge, these items need to be sourced, and should really be sourced by the people that include them in the first place or people that no about the subject. 23:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Blaise Joshua (talk • contribs)

[edit] Factual error in physics

It says: "Bicycles and motorcycles don't use gyroscopic forces to balance.[23][24][25]. The stability of a bicycle is a result of its geometry and the rider's ability to counteract tilting by steering."

I do not know of other definitions of gyroscopes or other alluded false beliefs , but bikes DO use the angular momentum of their massive spinning wheels in order to maintain the Vector's position in space. The same basic principle applies to gyroscopes. The sources cited were probably misunderstood. -01:50, 17 March 2008 (UTC)~

I changed the wording (note that I didn't put the entry into the article). The angular momentum is not necessary for a rider to balance a bike. However, a bike pushed fairly fast on a smooth surface will balance itself, and that stability does depend in part on precession. Rracecarr (talk) 02:17, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recent changes

I have commented out (again) the thing about space not being cold. Anything you put in interstellar space will cool to the temperature of the microwave background radiation, 3.2 K or so. That's cold. If the point is that "space" by definition is empty, so doesn't have a temperature, that's more a semantics/definition thing than a misconception about astronomy. Also, the entry had half a dozen typos.

BJ has eliminated the entry about reading in low light not causing bad vision. That can be cited. It would be better to add a {{fact}} tag than simply to delete. Rracecarr (talk) 18:26, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] guidelines for "common misconceptions"

With any other article, I would normally agree with Blaise Joshua -- if it can't be verified, it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. However, I feel this article is different enough from normal articles that I would prefer a slightly different guidelines for this list of common misconceptions: --68.0.124.33 (talk) 04:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC) :

  • Each misconception has one link -- to a Wikipedia article about that subject that describes the misconception. (If that article is long, a direct link to the specific section that describes the misconception).
  • That Wikipedia article about that subject describes the misconception in context, and holds all the scholarly references to verify (Wikipedia:Verifiability) that it is a misconception.
  • For this one "common misconceptions" article, a link to some other Wikipedia article is the only reference necessary for each misconception -- unlike normal articles, where Wikipedia is not an acceptable reference (Wikipedia:Reliable_source_examples#Are_wikis_reliable_sources?).

Benefits of these guidelines:

  • Eliminate controversy over whether something is or is not "encyclopedic enough" to warrant a place on this page. If some other Wikipedia article mentions that something is "a common misconception", it is encyclopedic enough for this page -- and if it's not encyclopedic enough to make it into that other article, it's not encyclopedic enough for this page, either.
  • Eliminate controversy over whether something is a misconception or is actually true, or at least a valid alternative viewpoint. If some other Wikipedia article says that something is "a common misconception", that's close enough for this page. And if that other Wikipedia article can't get consensus that something is really a misconception (possibly because it can't get any references), then it doesn't belong here on "common misconceptions".
  • Makes it much easier to fix inconsistencies where this page says one thing, and the article about the subject says the opposite. First careful Wikipedians move all the scholarly references to that article, and then adjust that article to be consistent with its references. Later, other (or perhaps the same) Wikipedians update this list of "common misconceptions" to match that article.
  • For people that want to go into excruciating detail, far more detail than is appropriate on a page like this, the link points directly to a more appropriate place to go into the details.

[edit] Earth's Core

I've just removed the following edit, which I assume was made in good faith:

Earth's iron core is not liquid (like the mantle) but solid, due to the pressure at the center of the Earth. Furthermore, the core may not be round as shown in textbooks but exists in a cube-shaped crystalline state of iron. [1]

My reading of the article to which this links is that it is regarding the positioning of individual atoms within a cubic lattice, and does not speculate upon the overall shape of the core. I felt this warranted more comment than could be given in the edit summary. --Neo (talk) 21:49, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah ...it should be made clear that the core as a whole isn't cubical; rather, the arrangement of the atoms is. That's kind of a big difference. --FOo (talk) 21:57, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to get rid of this page.

I think this page should be removed. Pardon the harsh words but I think it serves little purpose other than for Wikipedians to flaunt their supposedly better knowledge than the "common" person.

There is no need for this article in the sense of being informative since a person does not think "Hmmm... maybe some of the things I think I know are false. I should go on Wikipedia to find me a place that tells me just how wrong I am... oh lookie here, a page that lists 'Common Misconceptions'... super!". To borrow a phrase from the computer software industry: there is no solid use case where this article is needed.

Further more we must ask: What is a "Common misconception"? The very title of the article shows its inherent POV problem when it tries to be a list of them since it is very difficult to show just what a "common misconception" is in the first place. Not only that but some of the explanations I have found here are common misconceptions themselves, such as that about space being cold... which it is not... or maybe it is(!) depending on how you define a temperature of vaccuum. This of course demonstrates that this issue is not "undisputed" as the article head claims.

Any information found on a specific subject in this article can - and should - be moved to the appropriate article for the subject. Once the information is "at home", it should be removed from this page to avoid duplicate information. And eventually this list will be empty.

After that is completed, this article can talk about the concept of 'Common misconceptions', such as modern urban legends, faulty information in chain emails and so forth. It should also show how a common misconception can arise through word of mouth, incomplete information being passed on, outright lies, et cetera. At most it should have one or two examples of a "common misconception" and these examples must be verified that they are indeed "Common misconceptions".

I think that this article should not be nominated for deletion. Instead it should be thuroughly reformed by careful and meticulous work. The information in this article should not be lost, only moved to its appropriate places.

Comments? What do you think? --J-Star (talk) 08:15, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, it could just be interesting and informative reading. I'll grant that a certain amount of editorial discretion is required to decide what's "common" and what isn't, though that hasn't turned the page into a disaster. I'm sure much of the information it contains is in other articles specific to the what the misconception involves. However, that doesn't preclude having it all collected into one interesting page as well. I didn't know half this stuff, and I should have, but I wouldn't have come across it just by randomly browsing the encyclopedia.
The article that you speak of, about the general origins and types of widespread misconceptions, could be a separate article, or appear at the top of this one. But I don't see how the encyclopedia would be better without this article than with it.--Father Goose (talk) 08:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I'll grant you that it can be interresting read, and that you can stumble upon it... but that makes it a trivia article. Wikipedia discourages trivia.
I think that while the article isn't "disastrous", it certainly has quality problems, especialy with the concept of a "common misconception" being subjective. And as was shown recently on the page about Bernoulli's Principle sometimes there isn't even a concensus among those knowledgable about the subject what the actual explanation is.
Any information on a subject found here should be in the subject's article. It is unreasonable to think otherwise. Thus this article can supply only duplicate information found elsewhere in Wikipedia, which means this would be a Wikipedia article referenceing another Wikipedia articles, which is not acceptable by policy. And then there is the problem of syncronizing the information between the different pages since not everyone that edits an article on a subject knows that this page exists too.
I could find this page acceptable under the following conditions:
1) it is renamed "List of common misconceptions",
2) the bulk of the information is moved to the appropriate articles on the respective subjects
3) this list only headlines each misconception and then wiki-links to the respective articles. --J-Star (talk) 08:45, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
This list is useful as a means of keeping the junk out of other articles, and avoiding long lists of "what X is not" or "how X is misunderstood" in those other articles. A handy link to here serves better than clogging up the article about X. So I think it's better to retain the detail here - but I do think changing the title to "List of..." is a good idea. Snalwibma (talk) 09:06, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
If the information is "junk" as you put it, then why should it be in Wikipedia at all? Further more this page does not prevent "What X is not" to appear in the main articles anyway since not everyone is away this list exists. And a good written debunk-section in the main article does not "clog it up". In fact, I think this article here is a heck of alot more clogged by trying to debunk too many misconceptions in a much too small space. --J-Star (talk) 12:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia discourages trivia sections, as they are typically host to disorganized and unsourced information. I'm not sure it's right to declare that the information in this article must be in other articles as well, as some of this information may constitute an "aside" relative to other subjects (or go into too much detail), but still be an actual common misconception. Some of it does duplicate content found in other articles, though duplication is not against policy, nor necessarily a bad idea, depending on the subject(s) you're trying to present.
Renaming it "list of" is unnecessary, though not particularly objectionable.--Father Goose (talk) 10:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
I can't say I think this page is any more organized than the discouraged Trivia sections. Also, can you point to any information on this page that should not be in the subject's main page and specifically listed there as a common misconception (such as the Equal_transit_time_fallacy) or even as its own separate article? Please, give me examples. --J-Star (talk) 12:01, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
The "trains running on time" misconception might be too tangential a reference for Mussolini's article (it is in there, but only as an external link). But I would say it's a fairly common misconception, very worthy of this list.
The "10% use of the brain" factoid is also probably too hokey to put in the brain article, yet it's definitely an old popular myth also worthy of this page.
I think this page works fine with a mix of entries that are repeated in other articles as well as ones that are uniquely located here. It needs a bit of editorial intercession to keep it on-topic (the Thomas à Beckett one, for instance, is probably not "common" -- though I have heard of it), but most of it looks fine to me.--Father Goose (talk) 03:54, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Editors frequently create lists of things to compare different information, or to collate information to make it easy to access. For example, many articles acquire "X in popular culture" sections. There are huge fights on WP about whether these sections, which are basically lists of trivia, should exist or not. If they are trimmed back, they reappear 50, 100, 1000 times again. There is no clear consensus that states these sections should be removed, or retained. For example, look at Frère_Jacques#Cultural_references and Frère Jacques in popular culture. Should this all go in the main article? Maybe, but it might be awkward to fold it in. People clearly are interested in it; it gets about 300 page views a month. And it might even be useful to someone.

Now consider the article, List of world's largest wooden ships. It gets about 4000 page views a month! All this information in this list could be put in the main articles. It is all redundant in a certain way. But people like to have a list like this to compare information and details. And there has been a lot of interest in this article by many people.

This article, or something like it, has existed on Wikipedia for quite a while. I have seen articles similar to this deleted, and then something like it was recreated. People obviously want this sort of article. It was viewed almost 2500 times last month, so people are obviously interested in it. We operate by consensus here, and by giving the public what they want, in a certain way. As redundant as this information is, obviously the public wants it in this form for some reason. And so, we have it.--Filll (talk) 12:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Uhm, just because we get page hits doesn't automatically mean that this format is the optimal one or even a desireable one. If we went by the reasoning "page hits shows us the peple want it this way" Wikipedia would never evolve as long as poeple read the pages. And we don't know why they come here... is it because they seek information or - as I bluntly put it in the original post - to flaunt?
I'd also like to point out that while List-articles exist, they are named as such in the "List of..."-format (this article isn't); they also commonly have a bit of information about the subject listed (this article hasn't); and each list item is commonly short and links to the item's main article page if it exists (this article doesn't, at least not very often). The example you provided shows this clearly. --J-Star (talk) 12:57, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lot of recent changes to be checked.

For the record, I agree with most of the simplifications performed during those edits (everything that was put in html comments), disagree with the change to British English (the policy on that is leave an article as you found it), and do not know the science well enough on the factual changes made to be able to express a useful opinion.--Father Goose (talk) 22:07, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] is this correct?

in the Evolution section, it says: "However, fossil discoveries of "recently" (as in, only millions of years ago) extinct species are, in the experience of paleontologists, rarely direct descendants of living species."

well, duh. surely "ancestors" was intended, rather than "descendants"? 71.248.115.187 (talk) 20:48, 10 June 2008 (UTC)