things the masses of people seem to believe that aren't true.

[shortroundd]

I am not talking about conspiracies here that can't be proven with a bit of digging but more false stuff that seems to stick in the minds of the general population as truths.

1. All/majority of lotto winners go broke after 5 years. I have seen this touted out a lot yet there is no known source of it as no such research exists. There is the handful of bad stories that are circulated but this is only a minority out of 1000s of big winners worldwide. Infact, I recall the tabloids doing a feature with winners to celebrate Camelot's 20th anniversary or so and many winners had said their lives were better.

1. Marriage means all assets are split 50/50. Another huge misconception.

1. Prenups will protect 1 in divorce- again I think 2 and 3 come from people watching tv shows and movies that use this as factual when it's not.

1. Elvis sings 'Lonely this Christmas.'

1. The capital of Brazil is Rio.

That French parents give their underage dc wine at dinner.
They give them water.
French drink driving laws are also stricter than UK laws.

The thing with the fat/muscle thing is normally in the context of "I'm doing exercises and getting heavier"

So the volume is largely defined, which is what the pedants fail to consider

Milk is good for teeth when infact it is highly acidic and we are told to never drink it straight.

That dogs try to ‘establish dominance’ with their owners and need to be shown who the ‘alpha’ is or they’ll misbehave.

All based on one very old and flawed study based on wolves in captivity that has been shown time and time again. And yet every other person I meet seems to nod sagely and say ‘ah yes, establishing his dominance’ every time my puppy acts up even slightly.

@SnackSizeRaisin

If you work part time it's better to work Mondays because you get more time off than a part timer who doesn't work Mondays

That is true. I work part time and have a Monday off, my DH works part time and has a Tuesday off. We work at the same place with the exact same terms and conditions and I get more hours of annual leave than he does. Our 'base rate' of annual leave is the same, but I get a public holiday adjustment on top which is what makes the difference (because most public holidays are on a Monday).

There were no rude names or innuendos in Captain Pugwash.

There was no Master Bates, Seaman Stained or Roger the cabin boy.

@HumbugWhale

That Africa is a country. I can't believe how many people think this. It winds me up!

But…..Toto wrote a song about it and everything

@SnackSizeRaisin

A very fresh egg will sink to the bottom & lie on its side. A egg that floats has been permeated and is no longer fresh. It may not be 'off' but is not advisable to eat or use in baking

Correction: it most likely is not off and is perfectly fine to eat. You will know if it's off as soon as you crack it open! Freshness is only really relevant if you want to poach it. Not for hard boiling or baking with etc

Not quite. If they float to the surface, they are no longer fresh enough to eat.

If someone likes to eat eggs that are not fresh, well, crack on. (Pun intended).

But yes, there is a difference in 'not being fresh' and 'being rotten'.

Veganism is good for you.
It’s not. Reducing amino acid variety, calcium (and therefore D absorption, B12 and iron really is not good.

That if you leave your laundry outside at night it will get darked on. Which I guess is technically true, but not a bad thing!

@shortroundd

That Michael Flatley is Irish-American born and bred.

Mel Gibson is Australian, Olivia Newtown John is Australian or I think a lot of people back in the day believed Mother Teresa was Irish.

Olivia Newton John us Australian. She was born in Cambridge but emigrated young and has dual nationality.

You're correct that Mel Gibson isn't. He does have dual American and Irish citizenship.

That iron is iron and calcium is calcium, in a dietary sense

@shortroundd

A vegetarian diet avoids killing animals

same with vegan diet and when people say how much better it is for the environment.

It is measurably better for the environment, unless you exclusively eat a vegan diet of imported unseasonal stuff. I think the only time studies have found any vegans whose diet was worse than the standard diet was a family who only ate vast quantities of fruit, which is obviously not typical. If you’re interested I recommend Mike Berners-Lee’s book How Bad are Bananas which I found really surprising- it’s not about veganism, it works through the carbon footprint of loads of stuff. I thought eg bananas would be awful for the environment when they’re actually not that bad, and other stuff like spam emails were worse than I thought.

@SnackSizeRaisin

The national speed limit on a dual carriage way is 60 mph

Here's another: the "dual" in dual carriage way refers to the number of lanes. It doesn't it can have one or three as well as two.

@frankie001

That if you leave your laundry outside at night it will get darked on. Which I guess is technically true, but not a bad thing!

you forgot the nocturnal spider willies

surely you mean that muscle takes up less room than fat because it is MORE dense?

Yes. Yes I do. Sorry.

Acne is caused by diet

actually studies show that improvements to diet can have significant effects for the better on diet and other skin conditions so this is true. It's just that it's not 100 percent caused by diet as originally thought.

That comets and asteroids are the same thing and can therefore be used interchangeably. This has been particularly bad after the Netflix film Don’t Look Up was released and the media were discussing it. They kept referring to the comet as an asteroid.

There are scientific reasons why it was a long- period comet that was on a collision course with Earth and we had such little time to prepare. If only one of the journalists could watch Brian Cox on YouTube talking about this!

@SnackSizeRaisin

If you work part time it's better to work Mondays because you get more time off than a part timer who doesn't work Mondays

True for me!

*drspouse "She gets hyper because you know she's has sugar and you think it makes her hyper."

KarenTheGammonRemoaner "Oh you're saying it's all in my head. How patronising. It's not that."*

@KarenTheGammonRemoaner, I'm afraid you owe @drspouse an apology. She is absolutely correct (and not patronising at all). There have been studies to prove it.

Sugar does not affect children's behaviour. The change in behaviour is a mix between a correlation between sugary foods and exciting events (e.g Christmas/Birthday parties/holidays/days out) and parental expectation of changed behaviour.

www.bbc.com/future/article/20130722-does-sugar-make-kids-hyperactive

^Between them, the studies covered age ranges from two to thirty, and were well-designed though fairly small. All but one of the sixteen studies had fewer than fifty participants and one had just five. But the results of the meta-analysis were clear: sugar could not be shown to affect behaviour or cognitive performance.

Yet so many of us have watched children arrive at a party as reasonable, polite human beings, eat copious amounts of cakes and sweets and then transform into over-excited, over-energetic little devils – so how do we account for this? As the party goes on children play more games, and inevitably get more excited and then over-tired, when of course their behaviour deteriorates. We see kids get more unruly, notice how much sugary food they’ve had, and then assume there must be a link.

One study set out to test the expectation of parents who believed that sugar had a bad effect on their sons. In the experiment half the mothers were led to believe their sons were drinking something sugary. The other half were told the drinks really contained an artificial sweetner, not sugar. When the mothers were then asked to observe and rate their children’s behaviour, those who thought their sons had been consuming sugar said they were more hyperactive than the mothers who knew they had drank a placebo. But there was another twist to the study. While the mothers were observing their children, the researchers were observing them. They noticed that the mothers who thought their sons had drunk too much sugar not only criticised them more, they also stayed closer to them and watched them more. So the supposed sugar had not changed the boys’ behaviour, but their mothers’.^

The point is that muscle is heavier per square centimetre.

Muscle has more mass (kilos) per cubic centimetre. It is therefore more dense. But “weight” is another thing entirely.

The phrase “muscle weighs more than fat” is nonsense for many reasons. I literally go through, in detail, why it is nonsense every year with GCSE classes. It is a good way of pulling apart a fair few misconceptions though.

That medical professionals slap DNARS on to kill off the elderly and its like the TV where if you shock someone they will magically come back to life. CPR is massively invasive cracked ribs , punctured lungs , drilling into the bone to get access to administer drugs , hypoxic brain injuries and very low success rates especially in the elderly and fragile. DNAR does not mean mean not to treat you can still be given antibiotics and pain relief it means if you die they will not attempt you bring you back because there's no hope . The public should be educated instead of believing what they see on the TV

@MrsLargeEmbodied

whatdo you mean social workers can take your children?

Only a court order, or the police (using powers granted by the Children's Act) can actually remove children. Social workers assess, gather evidence and make recommendations and applications to the court, but a judge ultimately give the warrant for removal.

And on that note, that social workers get bonuses for taking kids.

Obviously. It’s just idiots who then pipe up and say ‘but a pound of x weighs the same as a pound of y’. No shit, Sherlock. I think most people do know that a pound is a unit of measurement.

No need for that

If people make basic statements, they can anticipate a similarly basic response.

So many people use the 'muscle weighs more than fat' as a reason for why they believe they are large ie it's not fat, it's muscle, (or bone density also gets trotted out). Which is erroneous.

If people want to specify what they mean, they should do so & be accurate about it.

Henry VIII invented protestantism