Ever been so convinced of something that you’d bet your life on it, only to find out you were completely off base? That’s exactly what science does to us all the time. Think about it. We grow up absorbing facts from school, parents, documentaries, and the internet, building an entire worldview on what we believe to be rock-solid truth. Then one day, someone tells you everything you thought you knew about bulls and the color red is completely backwards.
Science has this funny way of humbling us. What makes it worse is that some of these myths aren’t just passed down through word of mouth. They’ve been taught in classrooms, printed in textbooks, and repeated so often that they’ve become ingrained in our collective consciousness. Ready to have your mind blown? Let’s dive into seven of the most persistent scientific myths that turned out to be absolutely wrong.
Bulls Don’t Actually Hate the Color Red
Here’s the thing about bullfighting that most people get wrong. When you see a matador waving a red cape and a bull charging furiously, it’s not the color red that triggers the bull’s attack mode, but rather the movement of the cape and the presence of the bullfighter invading his personal space. This misconception has been around for so long that it’s become synonymous with the sport itself.
Bulls can’t actually see red because they’re partially color blind and are only able to make out yellowish-green and bluish-purple shades. Multiple experiments have confirmed this by testing bulls with different colored capes, both stationary and moving. The results? Bulls go after movement every single time, regardless of color. So wearing red around a bull won’t put you at any special risk unless you’re also waving something aggressively in its face.
Cracking Your Knuckles Won’t Give You Arthritis
If you’re someone who constantly cracks your knuckles and has been warned about inevitable arthritis, you can breathe a sigh of relief. Cracking your knuckles has no correlation to arthritis in those joints, as several studies that aimed to find a link between the two found no substantial evidence of any correlation. Let’s be real, this myth has caused unnecessary panic for decades.
What’s actually happening when you crack your knuckles is pretty harmless. Knuckle cracking is a bubble being formed and popped by the liquid that surrounds your knuckle joints, causing no trauma to these areas that would accelerate the onset of inflammation to these joints, which is what arthritis is. Though honestly, there is one small downside worth mentioning. People who excessively crack their knuckles might experience slightly weaker grip strength later in life, but that’s a far cry from the crippling arthritis we’ve been warned about.
We Use Way More Than Ten Percent of Our Brains
This myth is one of those ideas that sounds inspirational but is completely fabricated. The notion that humans only use ten percent of their brains has been repeated in movies, self-help books, and motivational speeches for years. It’s hard to say for sure where this started, but the truth is vastly different.
The human brain is quite active till death and it never sleeps, using 20% of the body’s resources and working all day even in your unconscious state. All parts of the brain are equally active, constantly firing neurons and performing various functions. Brain imaging technology has shown that even during simple tasks, multiple areas of the brain light up simultaneously. If someone suddenly starts remembering things better, it’s not because they’re finally using more of their brain. It’s just the active parts being utilized for a fresh purpose.
Lightning Absolutely Strikes the Same Place Twice
You’ve probably heard someone say that lightning never strikes the same place twice, usually as some kind of metaphor for rare events. It sounds poetic, right? Well, nature doesn’t care much for poetry when it comes to electrical discharges.
The idea that lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice is a popular misconception, as lightning strikes are too frequent to not strike the same place on earth multiple times, with around 500 to 1000 lightning strikes happening globally every second. Think about it logically. Tall structures like skyscrapers create perfect pathways for electrical charges. The Empire State Building was once used a lightning laboratory because the building is struck with lightning around 100 times a year. If lightning truly avoided places it had already hit, these buildings would be sitting ducks after the first strike. Instead, they get hammered repeatedly, year after year.
Left-Handed People Aren’t More Creative Than Right-Handed People
There’s this romantic notion that left-handed people possess some special creative genius, probably because they use the right hemisphere of their brain more. Artists, musicians, and innovative thinkers who happen to be left-handed are often held up as proof. The reality is more boring than the myth.
This misconception seems to stem from the idea that left-handed people are more dominant in using the right side of their brain, the hemisphere associated with artistry and creativity, however, there’s no definitive evidence this is true, as a recent Polish study challenged and debunked the notion that lefties are more likely to show more creativity or become artists than righties. Researchers examined over 200 individuals with varying hand dominance. Though professional artists in the study showed higher creativity levels overall, whether they were left or right-handed made absolutely no difference.
Mice Don’t Actually Love Cheese
Blame cartoons for this one. From Tom and Jerry to countless other animated shows, mice have been depicted as cheese-obsessed creatures. It’s become such a cultural staple that people actually use cheese to bait mousetraps. Turns out, that’s not the best strategy.
Mice do not have a special appetite for cheese and will eat it only for lack of better options, as they actually favor sweet, sugary foods, with the myth potentially coming from the fact that before the advent of refrigeration, cheese was usually stored outside and was therefore an easy food for mice to reach. In medieval times, cheese was one of the easiest foods for rodents to access in homes because it wasn’t stored as carefully as meat or grain. Mice ate what was available, not what they preferred. If you really want to catch a mouse, skip the cheese and go for something sweet instead.
The Asteroid Didn’t Completely Wipe Out the Dinosaurs
When people talk about dinosaur extinction, they picture a massive asteroid slamming into Earth and instantly obliterating every single dinosaur on the planet. It makes for a dramatic story, and it’s partially true, but the full picture is more nuanced.
The asteroid, or the K-T extinction event, that happened 65 million years ago wiped out about 80 percent of all plant and animal life on the planet, with the effects of the asteroid and the winter fallout that occurred afterward killing all tetrapods (four-legged animals) that weighed over 50 pounds. Notice that percentage? Not everything died. Some smaller dinosaurs and various other species survived the initial impact and the resulting climate catastrophe. In fact, birds are direct descendants of certain dinosaur lineages that managed to adapt and survive. So technically, dinosaurs are still among us today, just in a very different form than we usually imagine.
Conclusion
Science is constantly evolving, and what we accept as fact today might be tomorrow’s debunked myth. It’s humbling to realize how many things we’ve gotten wrong over the years, even when those errors were taught with absolute confidence. The beauty of science is that it doesn’t cling to outdated ideas out of stubbornness. It adapts, corrects, and moves forward.
These seven myths are just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless other misconceptions floating around, waiting to be challenged and overturned by curious minds and rigorous research. Next time you hear a scientific fact that sounds a bit too neat or too widely accepted without question, maybe it’s worth digging a little deeper. What other scientific “truths” do you think might be hiding on shaky ground?
