34 False Facts That Are So Ingrained In People’s Minds They Can’t See The Truth, As Shared Online

It’s very human to get hooked on exciting and shocking things and share that information with others. However, not all that we hear or read is true, no matter how exciting it may seem.

Misinformation can spread like wildfire, even long after being disproven. Luckily, the internet is full of curious people who, seeking to dispel those fake truths, band together in online threads like this and share their knowledge for the world to see. Check out what they wrote down below, and if you feel like you want to keep going, check out this other article of ours, too!

More info: Reddit

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Some false facts start as a joke, some are made to deceive, and some are first really thought to be correct, only to be proven otherwise later. But regardless of its origin, if not stopped, this fake or outdated information is, at best, annoying and, at worst, harmful.

As we found out by reaching out to u/Clear-Type5753, that is precisely why they started this thread. “There’s so much misinformation out there, and people often guess or don’t research properly,” says the author, emphasizing just how much misinformation there is around us nowadays.

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Helping this cause, the OP also added their own contribution to this actively disproven “facts” list. They said that this so-called “truth” would be the belief many people have that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human’s. In reality, both humans’ and dogs’ mouths are full of many different species of microbes (at least 600 each), and comparing them is akin to apples and oranges.

The post received around 10,000 upvotes in no more than 2 days, to which the poster said, “I was excited and surprised by the overwhelming response.” In addition to that, being contacted by Bored Panda caught the author unexpectedly. According to them, this surprise was welcomed nonetheless, and they’re happy and honored to have the data of their post used to pursue the further extermination of this misinformation.  

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It’s not like fake news is something fresh and unfamiliar to us. So why do people keep falling for it despite that? This question led us to do more research, coming across an article by the Center for Information Technology & Society.

Surprisingly, gullibility is not to blame here. According to the article, falling prey to misinformation most often happens due to cognitive biases, also known as mental shortcuts and automatic processes meant to make our lives easier, which we all have.

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One of the main culprits here is confirmation bias. It causes people to seek, favor, and remember information in a way that would confirm their preexisting beliefs.

However, the list of cognitive biases significantly affecting our information use doesn’t stop here. For instance, we tend to act without fully understanding the information in front of us, reacting to and forming opinions based on the attention-grabbing titles and not reading the article they’re connected to.

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Popularity is another strong factor that causes something known as the “bandwagon effect.” In other words, when people see that a lot of fellow users like and support something, they’re more likely to do it, too. 

When we see something shared and reacted to very many times, we might assume that someone else must’ve verified it before for it to get so popular, and thus, we focus way less on assessing this information.

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As many could guess, falling for fake news can just as well be accredited to political views and alignments. People are prone to more readily accept information that positively correlates with their political ideology and reject news opposing it.

And lastly, misinformation is notoriously sticky, and it’s difficult to undo the effect that false news leaves. According to the article, our memory is not very good at differentiating between a truth and a lie. When it comes to remembering something, we sometimes tend to assume that information was correct, regardless of whether it was false and whether it was later corrected. 

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To summarize, in this day and age, information can spread faster than ever before, and disproven “truths” that keep circulating can be more dangerous than they ever were. 

Not all of the false information is dangerous - some is simply annoying. But knowing how to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not online is crucial. And updating your mental libraries with corrected facts like the ones we see in this Reddit thread is definitely beneficial.

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Myers-Briggs personality test

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#34

Money can’t buy happiness. Complete b******t! Money buys tons of happiness and anyone who says it doesn’t is a liar or doesn’t know how to have a good time!Way too many Confederate States of America apologists still out there. The war was over slavery. Not taxes, tariffs, exports, states rights or any of the other tired excuses.The lady who sued McDonalds for coffee being too hot was exaggerating and an opportunist. McDonald’s smeared her name. The poor woman needed skin grafts (!!!!) due to that coffee burn.People love to talk about how pandas are incapable of surviving, and so evolutionarily incompetent that they need to be goaded into even reproducing. In fact, pandas are very highly specialized and adapted to an ecological niche that was never under threat until human intervention. They're grazers in bamboo forests, which used to be an enormous biome, and their behavioral issues in captivity are just a result of not having access to even a reasonable approximation of that biome. They evolved to be picky about food because they evolved surrounded on all sides by food and adapted to extract the best food efficiently, instead of clear-cutting their environment to get worse food. They evolved to patrol enormous territories because they evolved surrounded by endless usable habitat in all directions. It's not their fault that animals act weird when transplanted from their homes.Trickle down economics.As a dietitian, it drives me nuts when people say that iceberg lettuce is devoid of nutrition. A typical serving of 100 grams provides 17% of your daily Vitamin A and 20% of your Vitamin K requirements, all for just 14 calories. Plus, it's a good source of potassium, manganese, and fiber. So, it’s far from being “just water.” There's definitely nutritional value there.The whole alpha wolf thingThat people used to only live to age 30 in the past. I can't believe how often people still mention this misconception. Average mortality rate ≠ individual life expectancyThat you can catch a cold from being outside in the cold. You become more susceptible, but the actual cold is a virus you can only catch from other people.Cracking your knuckles causes arthritisCarrots improve your night vision. It was a “fact” promoted by the Allies during WW2 to hide their invention of radar. All those British pilots are downing German bombers at night because they eat so many carrots! Totally not because we have a device that lets us see them day or night from dozens of miles away.It’s illegal to talk about how much you’re paid"the triptofan in turkey makes you sleepy!" 1: you'd have to eat an entire 20 pound turkey by yourself in one sitting to get enough triptofan to get sleepy from it 2: chicken actually has higher concentrations of it, and nobody is running around saying chicken made them sleepy. Overeating makes you sleepy. Not the turkey.The misconception that humans only use 10% of their brains, which has been debunked by neuroscience. In reality, various parts of the brain have specific functions, and most of the brain is active at different times. has no indepently verified evidence behind it. It has no more scientific evidence behind it than a Cosmo quiz.Referring to a post from a few minutes ago. You must drink 3 litres of water every day to maintain your health. There is no scientific basis for this “fact” and overindulgence can be dangerous24 hours for a missing persons report—can’t tell you how many people call 911 after their child/partner has been missing for that long.That if you touch a baby animal for any reason, their parents will abandon them because they now smell like you.That your ancestors ate anything resembling the Paleo diet.That Napolean was short. He was actually average height. The power of propaganda is immense.That one anecdote that every paranoid snake-hater doles out about that pet python who stopped eating and would sleep in the bed with its owner. Supposedly "sizing her up" and "making room" to eat her. Snakes aren't that smart. They're opportunistic predators, they don't really plan ahead. Could you imagine a python sliding up next to an antelope and calmly trying to compare measurements? Besides, the most common pet snakes are too small to eat a full grown human anyway. (They can definitely squeeze one to death on accident, so you should never handle a large snake alone, but they won't try to eat you afterwards.)That on average you swallow 8 spiders a year.After eating wait 30 minutes before swimmingThat our blood is blue before it reaches oxygenThat you will make less by getting a raise due to getting into the next tax bracket (US specific). This is true only in very rare scenarios like receiving disability, but by and large, you won't make less per paycheck with a raise.Scientists don’t know how bees fly.HomeopathyIf you shave facial hair it grows back thickerThat men have one less rib than women. I have no idea how people still spread this, but I heard it all throughout childhoodThat there are "left brain" and "right brain" people, at least the way people mean it.Breakfast is the most important meal of the dayThat dinosaurs all went extinct. Birds are dinosaurs.Peeing on a Jellyfish sting alleviates the pain.Germans are completely hung up on the concept of only eating ONE hot meal a day. Other "facts": You do NOT stop being able to learn in old age, you do NOT benefit from drinking red wine (zero alcohol is the healthiest), you do NOT automatically gain weight after 30