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.

If calorie controlled diets and exercised actually worked… there would be NO diet industry.

I think the diet industry exists because some people want a quick fix. They don’t want to have to put the work in to lose just a pound a week.

People have also been conned in believing that calorie counting doesn’t work because it’s a business and anyone can count calories for free so where’s the profit?

It is just science, you eat more calories than you burn, then your body stores it as fat. Your body is doing it to protect you, it’s just making a stock cupboard in case you need it.

@SnackSizeRaisin

You can tell if an egg is off by seeing if it floats

Wait what, this isn't true????

@SuperSocks No one can mask 100% of the time. Masking is absolutely exhausting, and at some point leads to crashing or a meltdown or a complete breakdown. If you don't appear to be autistic at any time at all, then chances are you're not.

The egg thing is on the BBC website. A stale egg has air in it, so floats; if it sinks, it's still fresh.

That “innocent until proven guilty” is something that applies to every comment or consideration of an alleged crime rather than a stance taken during court proceedings, in certain countries, to ensure a fair trial or when someone is charged with a crime (in the UK for instance).
It means that the prosecution has to prove its case.
It doesn’t mean- as some comments (I’m thinking here of Daily Fail readers and so on) on SM suggest that someone IS innocent until proven guilty or that the victim of a crime cannot assert that someone has harmed them.

People think that co-habiting is as secure as marriage, regardless of the laws of the land.
Co-habiting is most definitely not as secure as marriage, a statistical fact, anecdotes need not apply.

Oh and that Article 6 (Right to a Fair Trual) is an absolute right

[quote PotatoGoblins]@AutomaticMoon that is very true…but once the police actually got wind of it and started looking around, they found an alarming number of body parts. Also he didn’t bother disposing of a lot of his victims’ belongings either, so luckily the police managed to identify a fair few of them based off of possessions found on the property which were matched up to missing people. Mainly “high risk” victims ie sex workers, runaways, drug addicts etc. Really sad [/quote]
All this is reminding me of A is for Acid with Martin Clunes as Haigh, which I’ve just recently watched and thoroughly enjoyed. I wonder if acid would be a better or worse method than pigs? Better probably. Haigh did quite well with it.

Talking of Haigh, he’s a lovely example of someone falling for a myth big time. Or not so much a myth as a legal concept that he pushed to such an extreme that it had to break!

[quote CorrBlimeyGG]**@SuperSocks* No one can mask 100% of the time. Masking is absolutely exhausting, and at some point leads to crashing or a meltdown or a complete breakdown. If you don't appear to be autistic at any time at all*, then chances are you're not.[/quote]
Not true for many women and girls who become experts at masking and who may well not ‘appear autistic’ at all times and to all people. Appearing autistic has also generally been based on typical autistic traits in males (eg lack of empathy, obsessiveness) rather than females.

Oh, and seeing as weird bee facts seem popular; a drone bee never has a father or a son. But drones do have grandfathers and grandsons. Worker bees can lay eggs but they develop into drones. If a queen runs out of stored sperm she can only produce drones and the colony will try to rear a new queen to replace her using one of the last fertile eggs she laid.

(This is all because the eggs that develop into drones are unfertilised and contain only genes from the queen bee, half of which she will have got from her father drone who is therefore grandfather to the new drone. A queen who has run out of sperm, or
a worker bee that hasn't mated, can only produce infertile eggs i.e. ones that hatch into drones.)

@Realis

That is appropriate to say ‘hence why’.

They mean the same thing just say hence or why, you don’t need both.

We use a lot of expressions with repetition though. Kith and kin and null and void for example. They are not 'inappropriate'.

[quote FirewomanSam]@SocialConnection at my first aid training they asked us what we thought the chances were of bringing someone ‘back’ through CPR. People were saying anything from 20 to 70%. The trainer then said it was more like 1%, if that.[/quote]
Yes, resus is nothing like what people think is it. My mum had to have the conversation about it after she had a stroke two years ago. It’s really violent isn’t it, likely to break ribs etc. My mum opted for DNR.

I used to volunteer in a cafe where we cooked donated food - often from supermarkets. We used to use eggs that were well past their best before date but would float the eggs first to check. I only remember one egg floating and that was actually a bad one.

That little girls must have long hair.

@SnackSizeRaisin

A 22” waist was a size 16? I find that hard to believe, how big was a size 8?

It presumably was her bust that made her a size 14 to 16. A 22 inch waist was always tiny! A size 8 waist was about 23 inch back then .

I think there's some confusion with US sizes as well, which are two sizes different from ours. So a UK s 14 is a US 10, I believe.

@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

Not if you work in a business that opens on bank holidays you don't....

I always thought kith and kin meant neighbours and relatives.

@godmum56 Of course - but it's not instant like a painkiller is it? A lot of people see antibiotics as some super strength analgesic that only doctors can prescribe. My MIL will take one and announce it's "taken the edge off"

Vaccines cause autism
A nip of alcohol warms the body up
Bulls are provoked by the colour red.

@ThumbWitchesAbroad

I agree, *@Ireallycantthinkofagoodone* - early 80s I was 33-23-33 and varied between a 10 and 12 because of size differences between manufacturers.

I am much bigger now, and yet apparently only a size 14-16. And I do mean MUCH bigger (13st as opposed to 8st - I haven't measured myself in a long while, I'm too scared!)

Vanity sizing has meant that I stayed a size 12-14 for a VERY long time, as the dress sizes grew with me!

My experience too - pretty much the same size as you both then and now!

That there is gluten in rice

They even write 'gluten-free' on the packets to cater to these people

The reason that they specify 'gluten free' on some rice packets is to let coeliacs know that it hasn't been cross-contaminated with gluten during the production process (hence it's safe for them to eat)

@LydiaGwilt

That little girls must have long hair.

and that older women mustn't

[quote CellophaneFlower]@godmum56 Of course - but it's not instant like a painkiller is it? A lot of people see antibiotics as some super strength analgesic that only doctors can prescribe. My MIL will take one and announce it's "taken the edge off" [/quote]
yeah no that's just silly

@DickMabutt73962

That a defibrillator will restart a heart thats stopped beating. Every single movie and TV show shows someone flat lining and the defibrillator miraculously restarts the heart for them.

It absolutely does (multiple first aid trained); a defibrillator won't work if a heartbeat is detected.

Are you confusing this with CPR? Performing CPR alone will not restart a heart, despite many movies and TV shows depicting it. Only a defibrillator gives you a decent chance!

If you’re multiple first aid trained then you should know how a defib (AED) works. It won’t shock a normal heart rhythm, and it won’t shock if there’s no rhythm (asystole). It will only shock ventricular fibrillation or pulseless ventricular tachycardia - to ‘reset’ the heart’s pacemaker. There has to be electrical activity in the heart for it to operate.

That may be different for in-hospital defibs, though - not sure.

There’s some nonsense being spouted on this thread, as well, under the guise of correcting ‘misinformation’!

That 'alot' is a word