When Myth Trumps Science -- On the formation of beliefs

[Triple Zero]

When Myth Trumps Science

Whether it's thinking that vitamin C can cure a cold, or that you must drink eight glasses of water a day, people cling to outdated medical lore long after it's been shown to be wrong. Here's why.

Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll weren't looking to start a controversy. They're both pediatricians at Indiana University who, as a side project to their day jobs, put together a study on a few medical myths that many doctors believe. The results weren't exactly earth-shattering: they revealed that you don't actually need to drink eight glasses of water and nails do not continue to grow after death. And the research definitely wasn't new. "We looked through old research and basically put it all together," explains Vreeman.

But from the reactions that Vreeman and Carroll got, you'd think they were questioning the very flatness of the earth. They received hundreds of e-mails from strangers and dozens of media requests. One particularly disquieted man repeatedly called their office, irate over their discrediting of the eight-glass myth. He was so threatening and abusive that their administrative staff filed a restraining order. "A lot of people were incredibly upset to think that we would question the fact that you need eight glasses of water," says Vreeman. "Nine studies from the physiology literature have suggested we get enough water from other things we drink, yet many people feel very strongly about water."

Now, the authors are back with Don't Swallow Your Gum! (Griffin Original), a book of medical myths and half-truths that will be published next week. Among the 66 myths, there's something to surprise everyone: that, despite what Mom told us, vitamin C does not cure a cold and even the highest SPF sunscreen will not prevent all sunburns. But what's more surprising than the myths they debunk, is how strongly their friends, colleagues and readers protested their research. Both Vreeman and Carroll have been repeatedly told they're incorrect, misinformed or flat-out wrong, that these are medical facts they're messing with. "It's not like we discovered something new, we just reviewed the literature," says Carroll. "But people still won't take it, it's like nothing would be enough to convince them otherwise."

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found via http://twitter.com/dangerousmeme

[MMIX]

It's instinctual to make sense of the patterns we see, to assign some kind of order to the mystifying connections that continually occur around us.

Dr Starbucks prescription - keep taking the pebbles

Medical myths, however inaccurate they may be, will continue to persist because they make complicated material a little bit easier to wrap our heads around. So the authors don't expect their readers to come away form [sic] the book with a complete medical education, but rather a willingness to question their doctor's expertise [my emphasis].

      - and TFYS

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Just more evidence that monkeys tend to get stuck with 'facts' once they accept them as 'facts'. Nice link 000!

[Cramulus]

it's interesting

reminds me of the book Laboratory Life, which is written by people trying to understand science from a sociological point of view. One of the points they made is that when something is on its way to "Fact hood", there might be a lot of uncertainty. Maybe the data is off, maybe the results are skewed, maybe it's only accepted by 60% of the scientists.

Once that "fact" has been cited by other scientists and built upon, all the uncertainty surrounding its creation evaporates. The "fact", divorced from the environment which led to its "discovery"*, becomes something we are certain about.



* or "creation", if you prefer

[Triple Zero]

That's interesting, Cram. (hey anybody happen to have a PDF for that book?)