Leaps in scientific progress are made practically every day. We’re constantly learning things about the way the world works, refining what we already know, debunking myths, and making new inventions. However, it takes some time before this new information reaches the general public. And even then, some people still won’t accept it, even if it’s been confirmed.
Trying to get to grips with this very question, user u/Ordinary_Piece_4374 asked their fellow redditors about the things that have been scientifically (dis)proven but are still denied or disliked by some people. Scroll down to see what facts the internet thinks everyone should definitely be up to date with.
Bored Panda wanted to learn more about the best way to present scientific information to the public and how to tackle people's concerns about how science 'always keeps changing,' so we reached out to Steven Wooding. He is a member of the Institute of Physics in the UK, part of the Omni Calculator project team, and the creator of the Weird Units Converter.
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That the earth is round. If it was flat, cats would have knocked everything off of it by now.
Fun fact, ancient cultures were able to prove the Earth was round with two sticks and the sun. In fact, no one thought Christopher Columbus would sail over the edge. They didn't want to fund his voyage because they thought he had grossly UNDER estimated the circumference.
Cats can understand an average of 50 words, and they don’t give a s**t about 49 of them
Jesus wasn't a Caucasian fellow
According to Wooding, from the Omni Calculator team, one of the main things to consider when communicating anything—whether science-related or not—is tailoring the message to the audience receiving it.
"The primary consideration is their scientific knowledge, but also their interests and concerns. So, refrain from using jargon or technical terms they might not understand. Try to explain concepts in a way that's easy to follow—creating a story around the research is a great idea," Wooding shared with Bored Panda.
"You also want to tell them what it might mean for them and why they should care about what could be relatively dry scientific facts. Images and infographics are also good tools for communicating complex information clearly and concisely."
Yelling at your kids can have long-term effect on the child's mental health. Abuse isn't just physical, and just cuz it's not physical doesn't mean it cant scar someone for life.
Especially when, you don´t know why you are being yelled at or know you are right and till get a slap. It´s taken me 40+ years
Evolution. No theory has EVER been proven more correct with so much freaking evidence but yet here we are
That Andrew Wakefield falsely linked the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine to autism in young children.
Meanwhile, Bored Panda wanted to get Wooding's thoughts on how researchers might tackle people who are always skeptical of any scientific developments because the facts seem to always be changing.
"One way is to explain the differences between scientific facts and theories; what might be reported as facts are actually theories," the Omni Calculator team member explained.
"A scientific fact has well-substantiated evidence and is widely accepted by the scientific community (e.g., the Earth is round). On the other hand, a scientific theory is an explanation of a phenomenon that includes facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses. A scientific theory can change as new facts are discovered and experiments are carried out," he said.
We found out that the cholesterol in egg yolk is indeed very healthy and useful yet some people still demonize it
Dominance theory in dog training.
Your dog is not trying to take over the world. They know that you're in charge because you control what they eat, when they eat, where they eat, when they get to toilet, when they go out, where they go, and every other facet of their lives. You do not need to pin them to the ground or use collars that cause pain. You just need to reward the behaviour you want to see more of. Trainers who use aversive methods just don't have the skills to actually train dogs properly.
Don't tell me that your malinois or amstaff need you to be tougher because alligators and crocodiles can be trained to sit for blood draws without force or coercion. Your dog is not harder to train than one of the closest things we have to dinosaurs.
"A good example is gravity. First, we had Newton's theory of gravity, which tried to incorporate the observations scientists could carry out at the time. As experiments improved, inaccuracies became apparent, which were then resolved by Einstein's theory of gravity, general relativity," Wooding told us.
"We can still use Newton's approach most of the time, but we use Einstein's where extreme accuracy is required."
Refusing to accept new information doesn’t just have to do with an individual’s stubbornness or narrowmindedness. Broadly speaking, people tend to cling to information that supports whatever worldview they have at the moment. Having to monumentally shift your understanding of how life and society function on Planet Earth is a huge task. As The New Yorker put it, impressions are very perseverent once they're formed.
Science is evolving, what's proven one day can be shown to be a mistake the next.
That's disliked by many people, because the brain structure that makes religion useful is also used by people who want science to go only one (their) way usually.
The carbon footprint was invented by BP. You know, they guys that inundated the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil a couple times.
It's among the first and best disinformation campaigns to this day. It pushed the responsibility of carbon emissions cleanly from corporations to the people.
First thing that came to mind after reading "BP" was that Bored Panda invented carbon footprint...
Same, I've been on this website long enough for my brain to automatically translate BP into Bored Panda lol.
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It's EVERYONE's responsibility. This kind of factoid just gives people an excuse not to do 5Hlt.
I would love to see where they got this info from. On one hand, yes they came up with the term carbon footprint. But also everyone who has a car is responsible for carbon emissions and who every has anything that uses oil is also responsible.
The Carbon Footprint is a weapon. People attempt to coerce others into reducing consumption they may well need for quality of life, just because fossil fuels are the only way to attain and distribute them for a well society.
Corporations (including Big Oil) exist only because there's a demand for their products and services. Demand = Consumers. Switch gears for a second: The demand for EVs is skyrocketing and the most critical component of EVs is batteries, which are natural resource-intensive to produce. Does the responsibility for the resource-destructive mining of those elements lie with battery-makers or people who buy them?
Ok so I've heard this one before but just to clarify, cobalt (to which I guess you're referring) has been mined intensively for decades for use in the production of petrol and diesel but no-one cared about the child labour used to mine it or the ecological impact until now. Also, battery technology is developing fast and the use of cobalt will not be necessary for much longer. Be careful people, the oil cartels don't want you buying an electric car and are putting a lot of misinformation and propaganda out there.
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Big Oil’s carbon footprint makes Godzilla’s footprint look like a baby lizard’s.
And why? Because we , the consumers, demand more and mor oil.
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This is so dangerous and stupid - people love blaming corporations for things when it is their responsibilities and actions in the end that still need to change. For example, if a country's citizens protest the oil industry and manage to shut it down or slow it down, like what's going on in Canada, but those citizens DONT stop driving or using oil products, then it just changes the supply to other foreign sources. You basically shut down your own industry, kill your own jobs, and shackle your own economy, while usually supporting a foreign country that has less regulation. That's why emissions are increasing in Canada even though the oil industry is being limited and investment and companies are leaving. The consumers are still using oil products, and oil is being imported from the middle east by tanker ship. For the average person in the west now there is an incredible refusal to accept that they are the problem, as everything needs to be blamed on corporations or governments.
Oh my ... it's not corporations OR people. It's people who let them pollute. It's people who don't use other metrics than price for anything and everything, and decide accordingly. There is no industry that, disconnected from the general population, just pollutes and pollutes and pollutes without their customers agreeing. By buying. If people genuinely cared as much as they should, every corporation would have to follow in order to survive. Blame shifting. What an achievement.
Corporations will say and do anything to not take responsibility and keep the money machine rolling.
Carbon in the atmosphere is carbon in the atmosphere. Who produces how much of it is meaningless, what is important is reducing the current load, not who is the most at fault. That's for later... if there IS a "later" for us.
70% of waste in the UK is generated by the building/developement trade, melting tundra is producing as much CO2 as volcano's, it's not your bonfire which is the problem, it's actually not your takeaway carton either, it is the rich with their three yachts, five sports cars and 40 empty, heated bedrooms.
I would love to see where they got this info from. On one hand, yes they came up with the term carbon footprint but
But carbon emissions are the peoples responsibility. We are the ones using, and buying ,the product. The only way to reduce carbon emissions is to stop buying stuff that has to be transported over long distances, or is produced in a way that emits a lot of pollutants.
You would think so, wouldn't you? But there's a documentary segment I think about often, featuring a breastfeeding mother who had a chemical analysis done on a sample of her milk and learned how many chemicals from plastics it contained. She decided to stop eating any food packaged in plastic, to see if the levels of plastic chemicals went down. And it actually worked; the second analysis showed significantly reduced petrochemicals. But the twist was at the end of the segment, when she showed the camera crew the food she'd been able to eat during the experiment, which was basically some fruit and some condiments in glass jars, and told them, "This is not enough food to live on. This isn't sustainable." You can't blame people for their 'choice' to buy unsustainable products when there is no better choice for them to buy, or the better choice costs three times as much.
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That homosexuality is not a disease and you born with it
The anecdotal and experiential evidence points to a strong genetic link. And yet, for many different people and cultures worldwide, sexual orientation is a spectrum rather an either/or over their lifetimes. Is there a genetic predisposition to Bi-Pan-A sexualities as well?
However, that’s why striving to be open-minded is such an important thing. No matter how much we think we know, there’s always something new to learn as technology advances and new research is conducted.
One study, published in 2023, found that attempts to debunk science-relevant misinformation were, on average, not successful. However, there is a silver lining. When misinformation has to do with negative topics other than health, and the corrections to the information are detailed, then people are more likely to change their beliefs.
What also helps make these corrections is when the misinformed have familiarized themselves with both sides of the issue and when the topic in question isn’t politically polarized.
Electric cars are not as green as Elon says. They still create pollution from mining & creating the electricity to charge unless from green sources
That your diet can indeed affect your hormones and mood.
MSG is a delicious and perfectly healthy addition to a number of dishes
As ‘Discover’ magazine points out, facts alone aren’t always enough to correct misinformation. Nor are they enough to change people’s minds. People’s understanding of the world is closely related to their sense of personal identity. Meanwhile, human beings as a whole aren’t the most rational even at the best of times.
Our biology, as remarkable as it is, isn’t all that helpful when it comes to changing people’s minds, too. Psychology professor Lisa Fazio, from Vanderbilt University, notes that our minds tend to create new memories alongside ones that already exist, instead of ‘overwriting’ information that’s not correct. So when you try to recall information that you’ve recently learned has changed, you might come up with ideas that are a collage of these competing facts.
On top of that, repetition tends to encode information into our minds, even if those facts are false. The more often we hear something, the more likely it is to get stuck in our minds. This phenomenon is known as the illusory truth effect.
Sugar is way worse than fat
That our current rapidly changing climate is caused by human activity and mainly from a few corporations.
You still get people who deny it
Then you get people who accept it but refuse to go after the main causes.
earth is a tiny insignificant sphere in space
No. Earth is a tiny, insignificant disc in space.
“There's an infinite universe of false things and a more narrow universe of true things, so most of the stuff that we hear multiple times is true,” Fazio told ‘Discover’ magazine. However, this can be particularly troublesome if someone is deliberately trying to spread false information.
Meanwhile, new and correct facts have to be presented in a way that’s approachable and palatable. If important discoveries are only ever publicized in ways that only other researchers would understand their significance, the general population might not understand why the new info matters so much.
On the flip side, it’s also essential not to dumb the information down too much or to over-exaggerate its significance. Otherwise, you might make people less willing to trust articles about scientific discoveries.
LGBTQIA+ people. Other animals engage in same gender behaviour and some can change theirs. There's a whole female only lizard species that can reproduce. Homophobia etc is the unnatural thing, not being gay, bi or trans etc.
Also, what business have these people with gay being 'natural' or not? Being eaten by predators or parasites is 'natural'. Dying in childbirth is 'natural'. Toothache is 'natural'. The same who say that only heterosexuality was natural don't accept the natural world once their d**k gets floppy.
Going out in the cold doesn't give you a cold. Cracking your knuckles does not cause arthritis.
but going out in the cold can lower your immune system making you more likely to get sick.
Myers Briggs Test (INTJ, IFNJ) is flawed and not reliable as any decent personality assessment.
Myers Briggs is horoscopes for those who think they are too smart for horoscopes. That said, I always get the same result when I take a Myers Briggs :D
Large vehicles increase pedestrian fatalities. Any criticism of the prevalence of huge trucks and SUV's in my city these days brings the truck bros out of the woodwork like "why do you care what I do?! It doesn't affect you!!" Yes it does, and it might kill somebody.
Don’t get between a man baby and his beloved giant twuck. Vroom vroom.
That exercise actually helps you overcome a lot of s**t including mental health issues.
I envy the poeple who can bike, swim, walk, run their minds clean. I personally find exercising so mindnumbingly boring that instead, my mind starts treadmilling each and every problem of the past day, week or even something that happened 20 years ago.
Autism is hereditary
It CAN BE hereditary. It is not hereditary in ever instance. There are more than one ‘causes’ or catalysts to autism.
GMO food is indistinguishable to your body from non-GMO food
But many GMO foods are designed to be more resistant to herbicides, which means more herbicides are used in farming GMO crops. Our bodies may not be able to distinguish the GMO food from non-GMO food, but can it detect the extra herbicides? And how well do other animals (such as 'good' insects like bees and ladybirds) deal with these herbicides?
Climate change, unfortunately.
“All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people.” Sir David Attenborough
Weed is addictive and you can get withdrawals from it
Literally just had an argument with a friend over this
That’s because people assume that all addictions are physical, ignoring potential and very real psychological addictions. But that doesn’t change the fact that “weed” has spectacular medicinal advantages, but as with everything needs to be used responsibly and with respect.
The Portuguese Man-O-War, despite being called a jellyfish by many aquariums and people, is actually a siphonophore. I'm guessing this mix up comes from the Man-O-War's jellyfish-like appearance and the fact that siphonophores and jellyfish are both Hydrozoans, and the fact that siphonophores as a whole are usually lumped in with jellyfish.
Just because your uncle touched you when you were a kid doesn't mean you get to say whether my uncle Gertrude is my uncle or not.
Load More Replies... BP's "Too many downvotes and you're cut off" system snuffs out any serious debate. Wish they would change it. If you express an opinion that others don't like, and you happen to be in the wrong, there is zero opportunity for your mind to be changed, because others can't share information with you.
Agree with 1 to 7, 10, 11, 8 to 9 seems likely. I disagree with 12 because the religion you follow is not hereditary. Etc. Oh dear, I forgot that the numbers change, so cancel that.
Wow, so no one mentioned the 2020 US Presidential election., or did it just get censored? Anyway, was the election stolen from Trump? No. Anyone who believes that is an idiot. Did the Democrats commit widespread voter fraud? Yup. They would have won without it anyway, but they were really just testing the waters for 2024.
That fact that calories in, calories out governs your weight is particularly disliked by Pandas.
There is much more to it. Hormones like insulin, the storage hormon is important. If you eat in a way , that avoids big bloodglucose spikes , you can litterally eat more calories and keep weight. The biochemist Jessie inshaup, or “glucosegoddess” in instagram, or many podcasts, talks about this in layman-terms, and has all the science to explain why. Check it and learn something, that blew my mind, honestly.
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Just because your uncle touched you when you were a kid doesn't mean you get to say whether my uncle Gertrude is my uncle or not.
Load More Replies... BP's "Too many downvotes and you're cut off" system snuffs out any serious debate. Wish they would change it. If you express an opinion that others don't like, and you happen to be in the wrong, there is zero opportunity for your mind to be changed, because others can't share information with you.
Agree with 1 to 7, 10, 11, 8 to 9 seems likely. I disagree with 12 because the religion you follow is not hereditary. Etc. Oh dear, I forgot that the numbers change, so cancel that.
Wow, so no one mentioned the 2020 US Presidential election., or did it just get censored? Anyway, was the election stolen from Trump? No. Anyone who believes that is an idiot. Did the Democrats commit widespread voter fraud? Yup. They would have won without it anyway, but they were really just testing the waters for 2024.
That fact that calories in, calories out governs your weight is particularly disliked by Pandas.
There is much more to it. Hormones like insulin, the storage hormon is important. If you eat in a way , that avoids big bloodglucose spikes , you can litterally eat more calories and keep weight. The biochemist Jessie inshaup, or “glucosegoddess” in instagram, or many podcasts, talks about this in layman-terms, and has all the science to explain why. Check it and learn something, that blew my mind, honestly.
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