It's Okay To Be Smart

7 Scientific Urban Legends Debunked - References

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It sounds like such an incredible fact. “Our own cells are outnumbered by our microbes 10 to 1!” I don’t even remember where I first heard it. But I read it in numerous science papers and articles by journalists who I trusted, so I believed it without question. I even made one of my first videos based on this fact! Problem is, this fact is not true. So how did it remain firmly planted in our common knowledge for almost four decades without any scientific scrutiny? And how can you prepare yourself to not be fooled by other scientific urban legends? In this video I look at a few of the most famous incorrect factoids in science, and give a few suggestions for how to make our common knowledge more correct.

Sources:

Debunking "Our own cells are outnumbered by our microbes 10 to 1"

• Savage, Dwayne C. "Microbial ecology of the gastrointestinal tract." Annual review of microbiology 31.1 (1977): 107-133.
• Dobzhansky, Theodosius. Genetics of the evolutionary process. Vol. 139. Columbia University Press, 1970.
• Luckey, T. D. "Introduction to the ecology of the intestinal flora." The American journal of clinical nutrition 23.11 (1970): 1430-1432.
• Bianconi, Eva, et al. "An estimation of the number of cells in the human body." Annals of human biology 40.6 (2013): 463-471.
• Sender, Ron, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milo. "Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body." PLoS biology 14.8 (2016): e1002533.
• Sender, Ron, Shai Fuchs, and Ron Milo. "Are we really vastly outnumbered? Revisiting the ratio of bacterial to host cells in humans." Cell 164.3 (2016): 337-340.

Debunking "Spinach is a good source of iron"

• Hamblin, Terry J. "Fake." British medical journal (Clinical research ed.) 283.6307 (1981): 1671.
• Sherman, Henry C. "Iron in food and its functions in nutrition." USDA Office of Experiment Stations - Bulletin 185. U.S. G.P.O., 1907.
• Sutton, Mike. "Spinach, iron and Popeye: Ironic lessons from biochemistry and history on the importance of healthy eating, healthy scepticism and adequate citation." Internet Journal of Criminology (2010): 1-34.
• Sutton, Mike. "How the spinach, Popeye and iron decimal point error myth was finally bust." HealthWatch Newsletter 101 (2016): 7.
• Rekdal, Ole Bjørn. "Academic urban legends." Social Studies of Science 44.4 (2014): 638-654.

Debunking "You lose most of your body heat through your head"

• Froese, Gerd, and Alan C. Burton. "Heat losses from the human head." Journal of Applied Physiology 10.2 (1957): 235-241.
• Vreeman, Rachel C., and Aaron E. Carroll. "Festive medical myths." BMJ 337 (2008): a2769.

Debunking "Vitamin C cures or prevents colds"

• Pauling, Linus. "My Love Affair With Vitamin C." Linus Pauling Papers. 1992.
• Arroll B. Common cold. BMJ Clin Evid. 2011;2011:1510. Published 2011 Mar 16.
• Hemilä, Harri, and Elizabeth Chalker. "Vitamin C for preventing and treating the common cold." Cochrane database of systematic reviews 1 (2013).

Debunking "8 glasses of water a day"

• National Research Council. Recommended dietary allowances - 1945. National Academies Press, 1945.
• Valtin, Heinz, and (With the Technical Assistance of Sheila A. Gorman). "“Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.” Really? Is there scientific evidence for “8× 8”?." American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology 283.5 (2002): R993-R1004.

Debunking "Sugar causes hyperactivity in children"

• Kinsbourne, M. "Sugar and the hyperactive child." The New England journal of medicine (USA) (1994).
• Wolraich, Mark L., David B. Wilson, and J. Wade White. "The effect of sugar on behavior or cognition in children: a meta-analysis." Jama 274.20 (1995): 1617-1621.

Open access and dissemination of peer-reviewed science

• Teplitskiy, Misha, Grace Lu, and Eamon Duede. "Amplifying the impact of open access: Wikipedia and the diffusion of science." Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 68.9 (2017): 2116-2127.
• Himmelstein, Daniel S., et al. "Sci-Hub provides access to nearly all scholarly literature." ELife 7 (2018): e32822.

How false data gets spread through bad citation

• Larsson, K. Sune. "The dissemination of false data through inadequate citation." Journal of internal medicine 238.5 (1995): 445-450.