I can not tell a lie: I love misconceptions lists – I love writing them almost as much as I love reading them. Therefore, I have put together a third list on the topic! Regular readers will know that we have already presented two such lists. They can be found here and here. Enjoy the list – and if you have any misconceptions of your own to debunk, feel free to do so in the comments!
Common Misconception: Humans use only 10% of their brain
This is utterly false. No one really knows how this myth started – but what we do know is how it has been perpetuated for so long. When people first began making this false claim, psychics “decided” that this explained why some people had paranormal abilities and others didn’t: paranormal powers were unleashed in people who had developed the use of more than 10% of the brain. They believed that some region of the brain, if tapped, could provide psychic abilities. This certainly helped their bottom line as thousands of books have since come out aiming to “teach” people how to develop this power. So, the truth of the matter? Humans use 100% of their brain – that is why it is there! Here is a case in point: a hemispherectomy – this is the surgical procedure that removes an entire half of the brain. When this surgery is performed, the patient becomes paralyzed in half of their body.
Common Misconception: Shaving makes hair grow back thicker or coarser
The reason that so many people believe this is that uncut hair ends up developing a taper – or split ends – both of which feel softer than freshly cut hair. It is for this reason that a man’s beard feels soft, but stubble feels rough. Of course, if this myth were true, every man going bald would simply get a hair cut in order to make his hair grow back thicker – true also for women with thinning hair. It is surprising that so obvious a myth (when you really think about it) is believed by so many!
Common Misconception: You can extend your penis or widen its girth with special devices or medications
This is patently untrue and the source of millions of spam emails sent around the world every day. Vacuum pumps, pills, stretching techniques: none of them make one iota of difference to the size of your manhood (and consequently the engine size of your car). The only way to enlarge your penis is to have enhancement surgery. This is, obviously, extremely expensive, extremely painful, and extremely gruesome – or so I am told!
Common Misconception: Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is evil and must be avoided at all costs
First off, MSG is a naturally occuring substance found in things like tomatoes, mushrooms, and seaweed. It was first isolated and presented in pure powder form in 1907 and 1909 respectively. MSG is a flavor enhancer that excites the fifth taste sense umami (the others being salt, sweet, sour, bitter). MSG is to umami, as sugar is to sweet. Another term for umami (and a relatively good description of it) is “savory”. When you add MSG to a bland soup or stock, it can greatly increase the flavor and add a roundness that can not be obtained elsewhere. Most fine chefs will use natural MSG when possible – through the inclusion of tomatoes or mushrooms, but many will also use the powder directly. It is a myth that MSG makes you ill – thanks to media scares around the world, people have an great horror of MSG, but those self-same people have no problems scoffing chips and other fast-food and pre-packaged foods, almost all of which contain it. The English “ready-made” gravy granules “Bisto” contains a large amount of MSG, as do many seasonings and sauces that are available at the supermarkets of the world. MSG is E number E621 and is labelled as “flavour enhancer 621″ in Australia and New Zealand. Australian study on “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” – showing no link to MSG: “[R]igorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.” Enjoy MSG!
Common Misconception: Half, or more than half of all humans ever born, are alive today
This is a myth – probably perpetuated by eugenicists and other people who believe the planet should be saved by population control of the human species. This is not a new myth either: in 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would surpass the world food supply by the mid 1800s. The Population Reference Bureau estimate that the earth has held over 106 billion humans throughout history. With a current world population of over 6 billion, that means that roughly 6% of people ever born are alive today. A significantly lower number than that given by population explosion alarmists. What is perhaps more frightening, is the fact that many nations today are not producing enough children to replace the population with no growth at all, in other words, many countries are suffering negative birth rates (see chart above).
Common Misconception: Plants turn carbon dioxide into oxygen
I suspect this will come as a surprise to most people, but while plants do produce oxygen, they do not do it by converting carbon dioxide. The process by which this all happens is called photosynthesis and is a relatively complex process, but to put it simply, plants convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrate precursors and water (fuel for the plant). This is a light independent process – it doesn’t need light to perform this task. So how do plants make oxygen for us to breathe? It uses a light dependent process – this requires light. It takes the light and converts it to potential energy – the byproduct of this process is oxygen.
Common Misconception: The North Pole is north and the South Pole is South
Actually, in terms of physics, the North Pole (while geographically in the north) is actually a south magnetic pole, and the South Pole (geographically in the south) is a north magnetic pole. When your compass is pointing north, it is actually pointing to the south pole of Earth’s magnetic field. 780,000 years ago, this would not have been the case, as the magnetic poles of the earth were reversed (this is called a geomagnetic reversal). Oh – and just to complicate things further, the poles drift around randomly – they are not in a fixed spot. This is most likely due to movements in the molten nickel-iron alloy in the Earth’s core.
Common Misconception: A mirror image reverses left and right
When we look in a mirror, our left and right sides appear to be reversed – left is right and right is left. In fact, what has really happened is that the mirror has inverted us front and back. The reason that we think it is a left-to-right reversal is that we are used a person’s left and right being reversed when they face turn to face us. So what is the mirror doing? Imagine a person with their back to us doing a hand stand to face us, rather than turning around – their right and left remain the same but their top and bottom swap. Looking in to a mirror has the same effect: nothing reverses in the mirror – not bottom and top, not left and right.
Common Misconception: Glass is actually a very slow flowing liquid
First of all, this is not true. Secondly, the reason many people believe it is due to the nature of old panes of glass in which the bottom appears to be thicker than the top – suggesting that the glass is “melting” and pooling at the bottom. The reason for this distortion in the glass is the method of manufacturing in the past. You will notice that you don’t see this “melting” behavior in modern glass windows. Glass is actually an amorophous ceramic.
Common Misconception: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves
In fact, it freed little or no slaves. Why? Because the emancipation proclamation (1862) declared the freedom of all slaves in the confederate states – that is, the states over which Lincoln and the Union government had no control. Furthermore, it did not free slaves from any of the states that were already under union control. This would be (in a sense) like Australia trying to declare a law binding on New Zealanders – when they are two separate nations. The emancipation proclamation was, effectively, worthless. It was not until the Thirteenth Amendment (December 6, 1865), that slavery was officially abolished in full.
Contributor: JFrater
The #8 entry is badly researched (if at all) and just plain silly. Penis pumps have been used for years with great result as a treatment for Erectile Dysfunction. It is not “gruesome” or painful. Also, a common side-effect for lack of a better term is added length and girth.
wow.. this is great.
so what's the deal with MSG then? if it's okay to have, why has the media pumped it up so much?
im loving the australian/new zealand references
Some of these are complete crap adding to the myths flyng around the internet. MSG is pretty damn bad for "some" people due to it causing terrible allergic reactions. It has also been linked to early onset of Parkinson's disease (MERC medical review encyclopaedia 09/10).
Interesting though how people still believe everything written in blogs nowadays.
Some of these things are just a mystery. There are literally tens of thousands of people who avoid MSG because they get headaches or other symptoms after they eat it. It's called Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. In the same way, the FDA always says aspartame is harmless, but I avoid it totally as I tend to get leg cramps after I use it. But maybe that's just coincidence. Maybe I drank sodas with aspartame and then coincidentally got leg craps shortly after. Now I think aspartame will give me leg cramps so if I accidentally use some I get the cramps I'm expecting. Some people think the same thing is happening with MSG. Who knows?
i have a reaction to msg, not in its natural state, but when it has been added, it gives me a migrane and makes me vomit, my mom also gets migranes from it, as well as some of my friends and their parents
Umm…cos it’s the MEDIA?
Lol!
Nice to know I’ve got a lot more brain kicking in for exams =)
That you are wasting by stumbling around the Internet =)
cheesedrummer: I think there was a legitimate scare at some point in the past, which the media grabbed and ran with – but it turned out that the health issue was caused by something else. Unfortunately all of the people who “love” to be allergic also decided they were allergic to MSG and we still haven’t heard the end of it. Frankly – MSG is in so much food eaten by people these days that any person who says they are allergic is a liar.
Let us not forget that anti-salt stuff we see now too – salt is essential for the body and an “overdose” of salt (hard to do) is still relatively safe as the body flushes it out in urine – and yet people still refuse to cook with salt (and ruin every dish accordingly).
And finally – the low fat craze – low fat or no fat – the problem is, eating *****loads of no-fat carbohydrates will still make you fat – because the carbs turn to sugar which turns to fat (if it isn’t burnt off). The way to lose weight is not to eat and cook low fat, low salt – it is to cook great food but have small portions.
[/end rant]
I forgot to say – if you are particularly interested in the MSG thing, here is a great thread on its use in home cooking from eGullet – the best home-cooking/professional cooking forums around. You can read it here.
Mmmmmm, MSG………..
I remember being told number 5 in science class. Is this something they only figured out recently or have they been feeding us lies in school? (well, more lies than I thought)
no i think it is thought of and or rememberd wrong, when i was in grade school 30 years ago in new york i quite clearly remember that carbon dioxide was absorbed by the plant during the night and oxygen was released by the plant during the day.
but after putting this down it can still be concidered a conversion process. first it makes and stores the carbs and water at night using co2, but where does the oxy come from during the day? the water it made last night. it is just a two stepper rather than directly from one to another. i now think this is, in fact, not a misconception.
OH NO!! SO YOUR TELLING ME MY PENIS PUMP ISNT GOING TO WORK?!!
all them hours gone to waste…
thanks for that jfrater.
yeh i totally get you with the craze thing.
i mean people waste so much time with ‘fads’.
everything in moderation i say!
Satiated guns on the list, g – I knew about MSG before though. When are we going to see an Africa-related list?
this is actually a good list lol
sick
x
jajdude: if someone submits a good one I will post it – but in the meantime I will keep it in mind in case I can think of something
cheesedrummer: you are welcome
Plant doesn’t turn light into oxygen. It turns H2O into oxygen. The light energizes the H from the H2O and releases O2. Light is the source of energy for that reaction. Just fyi…
I strongly believed 10, 9, and 7. As for 1, and 5 I knew the truth. From my basic biology, I know the light and dark phases of photosynthesis and glycolysis. However, I had not broken it down as you have. I know plants require Carbon (IV) oxide or co2 and that the process of photosynthesis releases oxygen.
interesting list
I just logged in to say what sugen has said. Oxygen is a product of photosynthesis.
Great list,
I use copius amounts of salt in all my cooking and its never done me any harm
Much like MSG, why was there a blasting rant about salt intake anyway?
I wasn’t sure if MSG was good for you or not, but after reading everything that has “natural flavorings” or whatever the heck the labels have it as, I stopped trying to avoid it.
I also saw on Good Eats (Alton Brown’s my hero) that you can eat salt as much as you like. His theory is that you just have to have enough water to go with it so it gets washed out of your body. His word is gospel as far as I’m concerned so I haven’t worried about it since. Frankly my cooking is much better for it.
Your kidneys can only filter out a certain amount of salt in a given amount of time so eating all the salt in sight is a bad idea.
My comment about water and salt is odd. Let me clarify. I meant you have to drink enough water during the day, not water down your cooking. I don’t have watery food.
We’re all saying how good MSG is here, but it is a serious trigger to any asthmatic, which isn’t noted. I have been hospitalized after eating food that contained MSG; yeah, it might have been something else because it’s a little hard to prove that sort of thing, but it’s not something I felt like testing, being as it may stop me breathing and all…
“This is not a new myth either: in 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would surpass the world food supply by the mid 1800s.”
Known as the Malthusian Dilemma – that we would out-stretch our resources. And we’re NOT doing this?
Much of what Malthus did was not prediction. It's extrapolation. There is a difference.
Mark Twain once noticed that the very curvy Mississippi River was getting shorter as water eroded the banks and the river became straighter. He estimated the amount the river had lost in the last 100 years and was able to extrapolate that IF the river lost the same amount every year it would eventually DISAPPEAR ENTIRELY.
But… If we must tag Malthus with the title of Prophet, we have to say he was right. Since his time famine has been an ever-present threat for much of the world, simply because there have been more mouths than food. Famines in the American Dust Bowl, the Sahel, Ireland and lots of other places have proven that there are often too many people in an area to be fed with the crops available.
see see and people call me crazy when i say Lincoln is overrated
I’m sorry to tell you, but the MSG scare is very much real – at least to a certain percentage of us. Often you might get a dry mouth, nothing to serious. But in some people, they may get a full-on asthma attack.
Tricia: I know what you mean about Alton Brown. The man’s a genius. He lives a little over an hour away from me too! I might get to meet him one day!
Great list!
I love that you occasionally throw something in about Australia + New Zealand – it’s good to know you’re educating people about stuff they wouldn’t otherwise know or try to find out
I think I get the mirror thing. I think.
The hair one has always puzzled me.
Though why does fair hair, if shaved enough, turn black??
hey this is the closetst ive been to the top yet. i only had to stay up till 5:03 to do it.
i think that lincoln knew that the emancipation proclamation wasnt lawful towards the confederate states at the time but once the union(USA) was back together would go into effect soon enough. he was an awesome guy.
cool list too, last time i comment drunk
Wow this list is great. And I believed most of the things on the list? And jfrater if north is actually south(in terms of physics) and vice versa then we can also say that east and west are also mixed up. And some people say that there is no north,south,east, and west because the world is round. Boy is this confusing.
Kris: SO jealous! He lives in Georgia right? All I have to do to convince my husband to cook something a certain way is to say that Alton says it’s right. He cooks the way we should cook.
Regarding 1 – use of the brain:
* We may use ‘all’ of our brains but do we need to?
There are cases of infants with undetected ‘water on the brain’ (Hydrocephaly) that has reduced the brain mass to no more than a bump on the spine. I have seen a documentary on one woman who had better than average functioning with hardly any brain mass at all. And recently Lancet featured a French man who had only a thin film of brain cells yet with a decreased IQ still functioned well at a government job (!).
“If something happens very slowly over quite some time, maybe over decades, the different parts of the brain take up functions that would normally be done by the part that is pushed to the side.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrocephaly
* If you divide the healthy brain hemispheres at an early age, it may be possible to grow up with two normally functioning brains. They learn to cooperate for shared tasks.
Not that I would advocate labotomys (See Walter Freeman’s dismal history).
New Zealand author and poet Janet Frame was due to have a lobotomy because of a diagnosis of mental illness. She was saved from this procedure by receiving a literary award the day before her operation was to take place.
However the brain is quite plastic, particularly when young and many young people undergoing Hemispherectomy do remarkedly well.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703fa_fact
cool list once again!ü
YOu obviously, or luckily have not eaten at a restaurant that uses HUGE amounts of MSG. The reason why this was a big story, is because restaurants need to use it in moderation, and not overuse it to make food taste better. There are others, learn how to cook better.
Your argument is quite weak here. Saying that it is naturally occuring in food mean its not bad. Its like saying sugar is not bad because its in rice.
Its all about quantity here.
Oh just read the comment on salt. High blood pressure runs in our family so we tend to go lightly on the whole sodium intake. Its not that we want to ruin the food but your taste buds get used to it after a while and the change has made us healthier. So it is a problem for some and not to be thought as a “fad”.
Jfrater,in every list there is Australia and New Zeland in some way,i`m starting to think it`c center of the earth
Anyway,very nice list,very nice.
Borka – Oceania IS the centre of the earth, there can be no doubt about this. Australia is the very centre, but NZ isn’t too far off.
Awesome list, but you lost me at numbers 4 and 3.
Good list… too bad you’re dead wrong on a few of them.
Well MadMonkey, care to enlighten us?
When I found out I was pregnant I went online to find out what I should and shouldn’t eat and MSG was on the shouldn’t list. The more I read about it, tho, the more I found out how many things it’s in and how the info was kinda questionable.
Excellent list!
But the explanation to #3 is really confusing. I personally don’t understand the difference when you say that “what has really happened is that the mirror has inverted us front and back” and then you say “nothing reverses in the mirror – not bottom and top, not left and right”! Plus imagining someone doing a handstand to turn around? I don’t get how that helps picturing a mirror effect either! There HAS to be an easier explanation for mirror images.
Perhaps MSG is not bad for everyone but I used to eat things with MSG in it and had diabilitating headaches. Now that I avoid it I no longer have headaches. I guess some people are just more “sensitive” to it
Also, the explanation to #10 is far simpler than you imagine:
Since the brain has specialized zones for different functions (vision, memory, motor coordination, etc.) then these zones are active only when they’re needed, so you’re not gonna need the whole brain to fire up if you’re only reading a book, for example. So, early neurologists noticed that only certain neurons on certain regions of the brain fired at any given time, but they didn’t understand why, and thus the myth of the “10% at a time” began.
But there are a few other reasons for the myth to become popular. This Wikipedia article has more info on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%25_of_brain_myth
The mirror thing and the poles thing are both miles over my head.
As for the MSG, I have a friend who says she can only eat small amounts of it- food that’s high in MSG apparently gives her headaches. She’s been like this since I’ve met her (our early teens), so dunno if she’d be inventing the idea. Her mother might have come up with it tho… that whole family is insane health nutty.
Jfrater: dunno how to address this to you, but often when I go on this site there’s some pop-ups that mess with my system. This has happened both at work and at home, and it tends to freeze my computer/shut down my internet. Dunno if you have any bearing over what ads are on this site, but if you do, make them stop!
On a separate note: You need to talk about Canada more often!;)
I remember trying to explain the shaving-gives-you-thick-hair one to a coworker of mine. She’s nice but so very very naïve. I unfortunately think “get fired get fired go away go away you’re stealing my oxygen omg so dumb” many times at work.
Excellent list, Jamie.
19. arkz – December 4th, 2008 at 3:32 am
see see and people call me crazy when i say Lincoln is overrated
This.
i have proved so many people wrong with your lists
My father will not eat take out Chinese food because he gets horrible headaches, dry mouth and chest pains when he eats food with excessive MSG (and thus becomes extremely agitated and short-tempered). I can eat the same food and not have any symptoms. Not sure if it is an allergy or if it is just an effect that MSG has on certain people’s bodies–like how some drug effects are felt stronger by certain people.
As for the population, the fact that many countries have negative population growth doesn’t take away from the fact that many more nations have greatly-increasing populations (India for example). I think that the population is a topic of concern and it’s possible future generations will have a serious food shortage problem to deal with.
Good List Jamie, although the mirror description could be a little clearer.
For the high blood pressure/salt phobia. They’ve done further studies and salt only effects blood pressure in very few; people who are considered salt sensitive. More concerning than the salt is the fat content of salty foods (not salt in cooking), potato chips/crisps, processed meats, frozen dinners. Cook real food with salt, its not a problem – eat gross fat/salt combo pre-prepared foods – it’s a problem. You’ll get fat and your blood pressure will go up.
PirateXX – Blond hair doesn’t turn black if you shave it enough, not ever; hair colour is determined in the follicle, underneath the skin. Geez. Hair will appear darker if you shave it all the time because is doesn’t get a chance to be bleached by the sun. Also as Jamie said, the hair doesn’t get a chance to get worn away, it has a blunt end and no taper so it appears darker, but it really isn’t.
Randall, you have been a bit quiet lately. Whats consuming your time? Work, play, personal crises? I just might post a list to light your yuletide fire…
It’s a common misconception that we only use 10% of the brain. The reality is that we only use about 10% of the brain at any one time, but the majority of the brain does actually get used. To say that we only use 10% is to imply that pretty much all of the brain is useless meat.
“Jfrater: dunno how to address this to you, but often when I go on this site there’s some pop-ups that mess with my system. This has happened both at work and at home, and it tends to freeze my computer/shut down my internet. Dunno if you have any bearing over what ads are on this site, but if you do, make them stop!”
Same thing happens to me. When a click on the name of the new day’s list to read it each day, I get a popup instead of the list!
Jamie – great and fascnating list! If the shaving one were really true, then my bald bro would have hair so thick it would make every 80s haircut band jealous!
I must strongly disagree with Lincoln and the slaves, though. What you’re actually relating there **IS** the misconception. The belief that the Emancipation Proclamation freed no slaves is a myth that’s been around for at least 50 years.
The best source to counter that myth is Allen C. Guelzo’s marvelous “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America.” He makes the case that the reason why emancipation happened the way it did is because Lincoln sought a means that could survive any court challenge. And since the United States NEVER recognized the Confederate States of America as legitimate, Lincoln had fully authority to free the slaves in Confederate states.
Also, Philip Paludan, author of the excellent and scholarly “The Presidency of Abraham Lincoln” (one of the University of Kansas’ American Presidency series) wrote:
“Lincoln did not, as some charged, free the slaves only in places where he could not reach them; he freed the slaves in the only place that he could legally reach them — in places that he ruled under presidential war powers. The language of the great deed had to be a lawyer’s language because Lincoln was taking a legal action. He was placing the great ideal of freedom within the constitutional fabric—the only place that it could have life in a constitutional republic.” (p.188)
In other words, war powers — which Congress agreed to — gave him the authority to legally ban slavery as a wartime measure whereever a state of rebellion existed, e.g., the entire Confederacy. The proclamation served until it was later codified in the 13th Amendment. The proclamation was neither worthless nor toothless. It did exactly what it needed to do.
The emancipation proclamation read "all slaves in states currently in rebellion" Many people will say, "that is because the northern states didnt have slavery" which is both wrong, and disingenuous…it wasnt widespread in the north, but people had them. the reason for the "Currently in rebellion" clause was because the north NEEDED kentucky and W Virginia to remain union, and feared that releasing slaves in stated NOT currently in rebellion would cause those states to join the confederacy. So…the emancipation proclamation was an attempt to sew mayhem in the confederacy by telling slaves there to head north…A move by the way which resulted in the imprisonment, death, and torture of thousands of escaping slaves…the proclamation was a political move…nothing more, otherwise it would have read "All slaves"
STL Mo ~ Thanks for that! That is great info.
The 10% of the brain myth comes from experiments performed on mice where they would run a maze, then have their brains removed piece by piece. They discovered that the mice could run the maze successfully with only 10% of their brain remaining.
.49 Stl Mo
#1 on this list is correct. The Emancipation Proclamation did nothing to end slavery in America and was never intended to. To try and explain away or bog this fact down in legalise is akin to using misinformation and lies to deny (for example) that the Holocaust ever happened.
By the way, if I was using more than 10% of my brainpower I might be able to figure out numbers 3,4 and 5.
The inner core is the center of the earth (smiles triumphantly)
For those with pop-up problems: Maybe it’s a problem with Listverse itself, or ad-ware in your hard drives. Either way, I strongly recommend using Firefox like I do; I’ve NEVER had a single pop-up from this site using it, for almost an entire year.
You might want to check your PC for ad-ware and spyware too, of course. I recommend Ad-Aware (which is free but is all you’ll ever need): http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
Um…Dole, please. I would direct you to the sources I listed. Guzelo and Paludin are among the most respected Lincoln scholars in the world. They know what they’re talking about. Read those and similar works thoroughly, and then get back to me with your foolish Holocaust-denial *****ogy.
North magnetic and South magnetic? Heck, Roland Deschain could have told you that the world has moved on, time slips, and the directions of the compass are in flux. At least until the beams are restored and the Dark Tower is saved, say thank ya.
Your explantion on the window thing wasn’t clear. You answer the question. Glass is moving because it is a liquid.
too much MSG upsets my stomach (as evidenced when I eat at certain fast food Chinese places)
i only use 10% of my brain on purpose
the emancipation proclamation only freed PAID FOR slaves. some of us are still slaves to fashion, electronics and spouses.
for some reason, NONE of my plants convert co2 to o2.
and, when I look in the mirror, I see old people.
Some of your explanations are ridiculous and shows you totally misunderstood the “misconceptions”.