Debunking popular myths with science

"The sun gives you vitamin D." "Alcohol evaporates when cooking." "The heart is on the left." Your grandmother told you, and some Instagram guru turned it into a viral reel. Almost no one ever checks it. It sounds good, and that's enough.

Debunking Myths is the Science Driven series where popular beliefs are put in the dock without a lawyer. Opposite them is what research has actually measured. The first casualty was the human body, with a heart that isn't always where the textbooks say and alcohol that remains in the stew long after everyone swore it had evaporated. From there, nothing is untouchable, from physics to psychology. If a phrase is repeated so often that no one dares to challenge it anymore, it has plenty of reasons to make the list.

How a myth is debunked in this series

A myth survives for decades thanks to the grain of truth it carries inside, and that is its best disguise. The doctor who recommends sun exposure when you are low on vitamin D is right. High cholesterol is indeed associated with heart attacks. It is true, but what is rotten is the explanation that attached itself to those facts, told by word of mouth until no one remembers who invented it.

The procedure is relentless and always the same. We take the myth with the exact words used at the dinner table and track it down to the mechanism that corrects it, from the phenomenon anyone can see at a glance to the molecule or equation that explains it, with figures that can be verified. And if science has not yet closed a part of the case, we say so, even if the ending is less polished.

Why a debunked myth refuses to die

In 1977, Lynn Hasher, David Goldstein, and Thomas Toppino demonstrated something that should unsettle anyone who thinks they are immune to hoaxes. A group of students rated the truthfulness of 60 statements in three sessions separated by two weeks, and some phrases were repeated from one session to the next. The repeated ones gained credibility, both the true and the false ones. The new ones stayed exactly where they were.

Psychology calls it the illusory truth effect, and it is the favorite tool of any peddler of nonsense. It is enough to hear a lie enough times for it to start sounding reasonable, without anyone having provided a single piece of evidence. That is why the saying repeated a hundred times at the family dinner table beats the study that no one bothered to read. And that is why this series exists, to repeat the correct explanation until it makes more noise than the myth.