Pedants: What "Facts" Have Annoyed You Lately?

[NotQuiteCockney]

I keep going into a nice baker, which has sourdough breads, with a big sign saying they're "yeast free". They're not bloody well yeast free, they just don't have added yeast.

I'm also unduly annoyed by things that are chemical-free, when that expression just doesn't make any sense ...

Make me feel like less of a freak! Share your pedanty annoyances. (No greengrocer's apostrophe stories, please ...)

A colleague of DH's had a bag of nuts once that didn't even say "may contain nuts" -- it had the "owing to the environment in which this product is produced, it is impossible to guarantee that it is free from traces of nuts" wording [shakes head]

About ten years ago our local Tesco had a promotion that was "2 for the price of 3!!!".

Shit, are they really?

I quite like Kettle Chips, but being made without science worries me. Are they made without technology too? I'd have to assume, as technology rests on science. So ... how are they made?

No knives, no pots, no fire ... hard to make crisps that way, I'd think.

Oh, I quite like finding that bottles of water are vegetarian. Quite a relief, really, much as I like meat, I think water is best off without it ...

PMSL @ vegetarian water.

Menus on planes which say "Your choice of tea or coffee". I'm so pleased they're not going to be giving me the choice of the bloke in the row opposite.

Yesss, I often look at any sort of blurb, mentally delete the bits they'd never say the opposite of, and see what's left. Generally, it's not very much.

I noticed the top of Anchor Spreadable butter says "no new fangled science"
whatever the flipdedoodle that means

NQC, DH and I wonder exactly the same thing about the opposites. Often there is no logical opposite. I love your Waitrose example. But you never know, ASDA may get its milk from random roadside stalls.

In our community centre we have a "Male Toilet" and a "Female Toilet" ... really? I didn't know that loos themselves had gender! And here's me being so rude referring to them as "it" all these years...

Ok, I've got a sample Waitrose product - they're very big on the verbiage. Apparently my olive oile is "obtained directly from olives". As opposed to what? And the olives are "the pride of selected growers". So some of the growers are proud of them, and the rest ashamed?

The whole selected thing is just weird. Maybe some supermarkets get veg from every single farmer in the world?

"news" stories about "twins born 18 mths apart" which is just a story about a woman having ivf twice!!!

Just because the embryos were fertilised in the same dish at the same time THEY ARE NOT TWINS!

Pseudo-science like "this product contains Bifidus Digestivum". Now that's not a real thing is it? When will it stop? Does atheletes foot cream contain 'Smellius Reductious'?

Anyone actually know what a flippin' pentapeptide is? Or why that woman's allowed on television to rave about them?

Oh yes, pseudoscience on cosmetics ads etc has got to be the worst.
Shampoo adverts that say the shampoo'll make your hair 60% shinier - er, according to what scale?

I haven't got a clue what a pentapeptide is or why that woman is allowed to rave about them but I do know that when I get to her age (about 50) I don't want to look like a crease free clone whose face looks like it's been stretched and pulled so many times that she's left with a permanent expression of surprise and delight at the same time. I mean, I can imagine times when that expression would come in handy (oh thank you darling, you've bought me an iron for Christmas... again) but I can also imagine times when it wouldn't be so handy. I'll let you decide what those are before I lower the tone of the thread.

ROFL, Ginmummy.

I've actually become a lot less sceptical about cosmetic-product statistics claims ('Seven out of ten women found their hair looked smoother in just one week!') since I joined a focus group thing where they actually send you the products to test.

Most of them so far have been rubbish to be honest ('50% of testers said it smelled like old ladies!') but it's nice to be part of the process.

I think that Waitrose "selected farms" thing is to do with them buying consistently from the same farms, rather than going through an intermediary where the products are sourced from lots of different places.

I turn into a screaming, raving pedant whenever statistical correlation is used as though it is cause and effect, eg children of married parents "do better". If I ever get a tatoo it will say "Correlation is not necessarily causation". (Is "causation" a word?)

yes and crisps and ready meals that say 'now 30% less fat' er yes, but still very high in fat indeed.
And 'sugar free' really p*sses me off mightily. Lovely aspartame for our children.

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a pentapeptide would be 5 amino acids stuck together.

Now, I am not a dermatologist, but I do know a little about the size of molecules, and the permiability of skin.

I'm putting next month's salery on the fact that it can't be absorbed, so it can't have a magical effect of the skin, it only acts of the surface, and the surface of the skin is just dead cells!

A few years ago when we had a tying pool one of my colleagues wrote a letter referring to someone as a pedant. The typist had misread it and typed 'rodent' instead. The author was so tickled he left it.

Oh god, I never go near cosmetics, but the drivel they use always alarms me (from a distance, like ).

My favourite correlation = causation example is, Ice cream causes rioting. Riots always happen when ice cream sales are at their peak.

'can help reduce your cholesterol'
Remember how Carol Vorderman used to do a 'reduce' hand sign at the point she said 'cholesterol' as if it was a wellknown handsign for cholesterol? DH and I still do the sign whenever we hear the word cholesterol.

I also get very annoyed at the idea that people with lots of debts are only bothered about the 'messiness' of their monthly payments. Carol Vorderman again, someone shoot her.

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