12 science myths that just won’t go away

There are many science myths floating around, and some have been so commonly spread for so long they’ve become universally accepted as truth. A survey conducted in 2015 by OnePoll found that 82% of adults believe in at least one common misconception.

The next time you hear someone spout about Everest being the world’s tallest mountain or how the Great Wall of China can be seen from space, feel free to step in armed with our myth-busting facts.

Everest is the world’s tallest mountain

To scale all 8,848 metres of this unforgiving spike of rock is one of the greatest human achievements, but anyone who claims to have conquered the world’s tallest mountain would be incorrect. That title goes to Mauna Kea, a volcanic peak in Hawaii with a summit of 4,205 metres.

But hang on, that’s much shorter than Everest, we hear you cry. In fact, that number is only the amount peeking above sea level – the rest of its enormity goes all the way to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A measure of its entirety from base to peak clocks in at almost 10,000 metres, making it the tallest mountain on the planet. Technically, Everest is the tallest mountain above sea level, but a more formidable title would be the highest point on Earth.

The Great Wall of China can be seen from space

This man-made structure is impressively massive, no doubt, but is it big enough to be seen from space? No. This remains a wonder only on Earth: numerous astronauts have confirmed it can’t be seen with the naked eye in orbit, and certainly not from the surface of the moon.

The myth has been regurgitated in popular culture since the 18th century – before people actually went into space – but based on its measurements, spotting it from the moon would be like trying to see a human hair from two miles away. The fact is, despite being 13,171 miles in length, it’s only approximately six metres in width, making it far too narrow to be visible. Those astronauts who claim to have seen the Great Wall have been proven to have mistaken the object for a river, in particular the Grand Canal of China.

Bumblebee flight violates the laws of physics

This is one myth that’s often wheeled out, usually to say “pfft, scientists – what do they know?” Indeed, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee used the line while out campaigning in 2008: “It’s scientifically impossible for the bumblebee to fly, but the bumblebee, being unaware of these scientific facts, flies anyway.” You may also remember the line coming at the start of Jerry Seinfeld’s animated film, Bee Movie.

It’s a myth that science is baffled by bee flight. The misconception seems to come from a 1934 French book called Le vol des insectes, which suggests that insects – not just the bumblebee – shouldn’t be able to fly.

But, of course, they can, and the physics behind it isn’t a great mystery to scientists. Yes, if you use the same calculations you’d use to explain why an aeroplane flies, then bees shouldn’t be able to take off, but a cursory glance will confirm that bees are not planes. In the 1990s, it was discovered that the secret of their flight comes from air swirling in a tight circle over the wing. “The vortex is a low pressure region above the wing, and it sucks the wing upwards,” explained Charlie Ellington, professor of Animal Mechanics at the University of Cambridge.

Red enrages bulls

We’ve all seen bulls bear down at the sight of someone waving a red cape in their face. It’s even spawned popular sayings such as “seeing red” or “red mist” to describe anger overcoming us. In all truth, however, bulls are colour-blind. It’s not the colour of the cape that enrages the animal, but the flapping movement of the material. In tests conducted by science’s favourite tandem, the MythBusters, a bull was presented with three dummies holding capes of varying colours. It was proven that the bull would charge at the cape that was moving, regardless of the colour.

Chameleons can change to any colour

A huge 69% of adults believe this one but, despite what cartoons may tell us, a chameleon can’t turn itself tartan or mimic the pattern of your wallpaper as part of its camouflage capabilities. The chameleon does have an extraordinary colour-changing ability, but it actually shifts colour in response to mood, a change in body temperature or to communicate rather than to blend in with its environment.

For instance, they’re able to turn themselves bleach-white in direct sunshine to reflect the heat or turn dark in the cold to absorb light, while a male’s colourful patterned body can be a mating display. A little bonus fact is that the outermost skin of a chameleon is transparent: they change colour through layers of cells called chromatophores, which contain different pigments to make up its striking palette.

Lightning never strikes in the same place twice

Image: Joost Rooijmans

Yes it does. Trees and tall buildings are often hit repeatedly by lightning that isn’t too fussy about what it targets. In fact, the US National Weather Service believe that the Empire State Building is hit by lightning around 25 times per year. During one storm, it took eight strikes in less than half an hour.

Of course, the main purpose of the idiom is to encourage people to try something more than once – a folksy way of informing them that a bad experience is unlikely to be repeated. Again, not always true. Park ranger Roy Sullivan was hit by lightning on seven different occasions, seeing him enter the Guinness World Records, while Tsutomu Yamaguchi had an even more traumatic experience, managing to be hit by both the Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bombings.

So it’s bad science and a bad idiom. 0/2.

There are left- or right-brained people

We’ve all heard people claiming to be more artistically inclined or rubbish at maths because they’re either left- or right-brained but is there any weight behind it? Sorry, but you can’t blame your inability at Countdown on your brain hemispheres any more.

The school of thought was always thus: creative types were more right-brained, while more calculated and detailed folk channelled the left half of their brain. It’s a neat way to classify personality traits, but studies have shown no indication that individuals have stronger left or right halves of their brains.

The University of Utah conducted a two-year study with more than 1,000 participants, whose brains were observed as they performed various tasks. While the researchers found it was true that the left and right parts of the brain are responsible for alternative functions (language on the left; attention on the right), no brain was stronger either way. As Dr Jeff Anderson, the study’s lead author, stated: “The truth is that it would be highly inefficient for one half of the brain to consistently be more active than the other.”

Head over to the next page to dispel five more myths about senses, flat-earthers, human brains, sharks and dogs. 

We only have five senses

Sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. These senses, categorised by Aristotle himself, are our lot, right? Wrong. While we have long focused on these as our set of tools, the truth is that we have far more, even as many as 20. The big five might seem to have every base covered, but we’re more perceptual than we realise.

What about our ability to sense temperatures (thermoception), or our ability to balance upright while skiing (equilibrioception) – where would you class these? How about hunger, thirst, motion or spatial awareness?

Without these senses, we’d operate on a rather basic level – so boiling all human senses down to just five doesn’t make science happy. Each sense can be subcategorised into further senses. For example, there’s nociception (a sense of pain), proprioception (a sense of knowing where your limbs are) and time perception. We’re alert to many influences playing on our body and brain receptors, so scientists make sense when they say we have more than five.

People in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat

One common myth is that many in the Middle Ages thought the world was flat. The popular teaching is that Christopher Columbus set sail much to the horror of his contemporaries, who thought heading into the horizon meant dropping off the face of the Earth – but it’s not true. People understood our planet to be spherical centuries before Columbus sailed. Ancient Greeks accepted this belief as fact, the Christian church believed it, and publishings such as Ptolemy’s 2nd-century Geography taught it.

So how did the myth surface? It’s widely believed some authors in the 18th and 19th century gave currency to the idea as part of a debate between religion and science. Anti-religion writers used the myth as an attack on religion by falsely claiming that the Church had evangelised about a flat Earth, when science was right all along. Washington Irving’s 1828 biography of Columbus gave a false account of how prominent members of a committee discussing Columbus’s proposals took issue with his notion of a spherical Earth. Since then, popular culture has been falsely peppered with references to those in the Middle Ages believing in this flat Earth error.

We only use 10% of our brain

We’d like to think that we only use 10% of our brain, with the rest waiting like an empty hard drive ready to be filled. Sadly, this isn’t the case – the notion has been scientifically quashed as nonsense. Hollywood movies such as Limitless or Lucy don’t help to debunk the myth, portraying a world in which unlocking that extra 90% has us learning languages in seconds or becoming instant experts in anything from combat or mechanics. But it’s the stuff of sci-fi slosh. We do use our whole brain, all the time.

We process so much information at any one time that our neurons and synapses are firing across the whole brain almost non-stop. Any function or task we perform constantly stimulates different parts of the brain; MRI scans conducted by neuroscientists have proved that the organ is lit up with activity even during the most trivial tasks.

There’s also the case of head injuries. Even the smallest ding to the head can cause severe trauma and brain damage. If 90% of our brains lay dormant, we’d be able to lop off our “non-functioning” section and walk around perfectly fine. This, as we know, isn’t possible.

Finally crushing the myth is the evolution argument. Nature is such an efficient system that having a large, redundant amount of grey matter taking up space in our craniums would have been sufficiently secateured eons ago. The brain is a huge drain on our energy (it’s estimated it draws around 20% of our total energy), so having to power such a large percentage with no benefit doesn’t make much biological sense.

It’s believed the 10% myth stems from a misquote in the foreword to Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Journalist Lowell Thomas wrote about Harvard psychologists who, while studying a child genius in 1890, came to the conclusion that there must be untapped brain reserves in waiting: “Professor William James of Harvard used to say that the average man develops only ten percent of his latent mental ability.” However, it’s understood that James actually stated it was ten percent of man’s “mental energy”.

The myth continues to swirl as it’s a romantic idea of human potential and what we could possibly achieve if we put our mind to it. It also makes for good plot lines in movies and books.

Sharks can’t get cancer

Chances are you’ve heard some know-it-all loudly say this to their kids at an aquarium, but it’s about as true as saying a great white has teeth made from rubber. Sadly for our fishy friends, they aren’t immune to the disease – they do get cancer. Even sadder is how many humans have fallen for this hook, line, and sinker, leading to devastating numbers of sharks being killed for “medicinal” purposes.

The misconception can be traced back to the 1970s, when researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine discovered that cartilage stopped the growth of new blood vessels in tissue – a key characteristic of malignant tumours. Since shark skeletons are made entirely of cartilage, it’s no wonder researchers’ attention turned to sharks. Scientists also discovered they had a lower rate of the disease and began exposing them to high levels of carcinogens, although there were no results to prove that the sharks didn’t develop tumours.

The most damage came when Dr William Lane gained notable media attention for his book Sharks Don’t Get Cancer. Following dubious clinical trials, he claimed remarkable results from shark cartilage. Rather more suspiciously, Lane then set up his own business, selling pills of powdered shark cartilage as an alternative treatment for cancer. The FDA conducted clinical trials of the pill on three separate occasions and found it to have no effect whatsoever. Further blowing the theory out of the water, a 2004 study from the University of Hawaii found multiple tumours in a range of sharks, skates and rays, and even tumours in shark cartilage itself.

A dog year is equal to seven human years

For years we’ve equated that one human year accounts for seven in the dog world. It’s a neat number believed by more than 50% of adults – but it’s scientific fluff. A dog’s equivalent age all depends on its size and breed, and varies depending on its stage in life.

We can travel way back to 1268 to find a tributary to the belief, when it was claimed dogs aged at a 9:1 ratio to humans. The notion was that humans live to approximately 90, while dogs live to nine – although we’d be staggered to find many who lived to 90 back then. Centuries later, scientists used average life expectancies of 70 and 10 – and thus was born the seven-year rule.

But then logic stepped in. As dogs can reproduce by the age of one, the 7:1 rule would mean humans would be reproducing by age seven and living to 150. Myth busted. Further studies found that dogs mature around 15 to 20 times faster in the first year, and that large dog age faster than small dogs in their later years.

So to answer the burning question: how old is your dog, really? This chart below will help you work out your pet’s true age.