Oh humanity, we're a gullible bunch. People believe a lot of shit and we've never met a memorable statistic that we didn't like to spread. You may wanna put a cushion under your chin, coz that jaw is about to drop....
1) Sugar makes kids hyperactive.
There is no substantial evidence that indicates sugar actually makes kids bounce off the walls, although other ingredients like caffeine could well be a cause. It is thought that the excitement which surround birthdays and Halloween parties is the main cause of this hyperactivity while sugary sweets have gotten the blame just for being present.
2) If you go to sleep with a concussion you'll go into a coma.
*cough* Bullshit! Excuse me. This is a classic one, there's no definite source of where this myth came from but it has been shown that sleep deprivation is definitely not a good treatment for concussion, which is the brain's temporary inability to function fully after a trauma, and it's perfectly safe to sleep with one.
3) Dropping a penny from a height can kill someone.
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It's too light and aerodynamically awkward, if a penny were to be dropped from the Eiffel Tower on someone's head it wouldn't split it in half, it'd just feel like someone flicked them. Dickish, sure, but not deadly.
4) Cracking your knuckles gives you arthritis.
Donald Unger won the 2009 Ig Nobel Prize For Medicine by conclusively proving this "fact" to be a myth. The snapping sound you hear when cracking knuckles is not bones clicking off each other, it's merely the popping of bubbles in your joints' synovial fluid: irritating to others all right, but not harmful.
5) Hot drinks cool you down.
A classic old wives' tale. The reasoning behind this is that by consuming a hot drink on a warm day you'll perspire more and the sweat will ultimately make you cooler. The fact is, that the amount of sweat produced would not be sufficient to cool you down from the combined ambient temperature and that steaming liquid you just put in your body. So tell that to your mother when she tries to force a cup of tea on you this summer.
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6) Pigeons blow up if you feed them uncooked rice.
Just not so, pigeons don't consume enough water to cause any significant swelling of rice in their stomach... The Simpsons was full of shit!
7) We use 10% of our brains.
One of the most popular facts that are total crap. Einstein mentioned this in passing like 100 years ago to make a rhetorical point, but it has since been taken into the popular consciousness as a statistical fact. Well, it isn't a fact. The brain uses more energy than any other organ in our body and over the course of the day we will use its entirety.
8) If you shave your hair it returns faster and thicker.
Studies have proven this to be guff of the highest order, it's an optical illusion caused by the fact newly grown hair is darker because it hasn't been lightened by sunlight yet.
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9) Lightning never strikes the same place twice.
Baloney! As Judge Judy would say. Lightning just cares about getting to the ground quicker, meaning tall objects get the brunt of its strikes. Case in point, the Empire State Building gets struck about 100 times per year. That statistic is rather shocking, isn't it? Sorry. (Not sorry.)
10) Men think about sex every 7 seconds.
This stat has no factual basis whatsoever. The reputed sex scientist Alfred Kinsey's research suggested that men think about sex from a few times a day to a few times a month, but then someone just straight-up invented this 7 second shit afterwards, probably because they thought it was more sensational. If men actually thought about sex every 7 seconds then the wheel would never have been invented.
11) Using a mobile phone on a plane can interfere with instruments.
This has been tested by the FAA and was proved to have no effect whatsoever on a plane's instruments. The real reasoning behind it is that the use of phones would interfere with the flight crew. I mean, how could they sell you scratch cards and mini bottles of booze if you're too busy havin' the chats?
