Fake science "facts". I bet wherever you grew up, you heard some version of the urban legend about the woman driving alone at night when a car starts following, flashing its lights. She’s scared, thinking it’s a murderer out to get her.
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The punchline of the story is that she eventually realises the other driver was trying to warn her about the axe wielding maniac hiding in the back seat of her car.
These urban legends aren’t confined to the school yard. Science has its own fair share of them – “facts” that are shared as truth, in much the same way that urban legends are. Here’s just a few of my favourite fake science “facts” that I often get asked about.
1. Vaccines cause autism
We may as well start with “the big one”.
There’s a lot of debate around the safety of vaccines, and one of the things that crops up time and time again is the idea that vaccines cause children to develop autism.
This particular piece of false science dates back to a paper that was published in 1998, led by Dr Andrew Wakefield.
In 2010 the paper was retracted due to fraud, and Wakefield was banned from practising medicine in the UK. Thousands of studies since have found no link between vaccines and autism – but it still persists as a scientific “fact”.
2. Your hair and nails keep growing after you die
Everybody knows that the only things that keep growing after you die are your hair and fingernails, right? Only it’s not true at all.
When we die our skin start to dry out, and shrinks back from around our nails and hair follicles, making hair and nails seem longer.
Rest assured none of your body parts continue growing after your heart stops beating.
3. If you go out without a jumper you’ll catch a cold
“Put on your jumper or you’ll catch your death from cold”.
Who hasn’t heard something similar from a relative?
But nope, sorry Nan, I won’t catch a cold just from being cold.
A cold is caused by a virus – so the only way you’re catching one is to come into contact with viral particles shed by someone else who already has it.
So good hygiene practices are going to be more helpful than wearing a jumper when it comes to preventing a cold.
4. You only use 10% of your brain
We probably all know someone who’s a little slow on the uptake, but even the slowest thinker among us still uses a lot more than 10% of our grey matter.
We don’t just use a small part of our brain, we use the whole lot. Some areas are more active than others at different times or when doing different activities, but there’s no part that we don’t use at all.
So probably don’t waste your money on self-help books promising to unlock that other 90% of your brainpower.
There’s a bunch more of these scientific “facts” out there – so it pays to do a little fact checking before you pass them on.
