35 False 'Facts' That You Wrongly Believe (And 1 That You Should)

33. Vitamin C Is An Effective Treatment Against The Common Cold

No, actually it's not. While nobody's arguing that Vitamin C is bad for you - it certainly is not - there's been much research into the perceived benefits of Vitamin C in combating the good old common cold. To date, there's been little, if any, evidence uncovered to support use of Vitamin C at the onset of a cold to reduce the length, severity or frequency of colds. In 2007 researchers interrogated six decades worth of data from clinical research and concluded that Vitamin C, when taken at the onset of a cold, does nothing to reduce the duration or the severity of the cold. For adults who routinely ingested Vitamin C supplements on a daily basis, whether with or without a cold, Vitamin C was found to reduce the duration of colds in less than 10% of them. Across an entire year the benefit from routinely taking Vitamin C, if compared with an average adult who doesn't do so, amounts to just one less day of suffering from colds. While Vitamin C from natural sources is said to be essential, in seven separate studies Vitamin C supplements were found to be no more or less effective than a placebo in warding off the effects of a cold. Next time someone tells you that you should be taking more Vitamin C, you now know exactly what to tell them.

32. Lemmings Engage In Mass Suicidal Dives Off Cliffs When Migrating

No, actually they don't. There are a few key reasons why people believe this one. Foremost is that the majority of us wouldn't know a lemming if one jumped over a cliff and landed on us. Also, as a general rule lemming populations fluctuate more regularly and more wildly than any other rodent. On average, every three or four years the lemming population increases massively, then dies off to virtually nothing before coming back again. Despite many decades of research, nobody quite knows why this happens. But in the 16th century a French geographer tried to explain. Having noted the huge fluctuations in lemming numbers, the geographer said that "lemmings fell out of the sky in stormy weather, and then suffered mass extinctions with the sprouting of the grasses of spring". Other stories and superstitions have cropped up down the centuries, particularly with the Inuit people, all of which were seemingly supported by the 1958 Disney movie Wild Wilderness, a contrived piece of work that falsely represented lemmings as mindless creatures who followed each other to their deaths, for no apparent reason, by plunging over cliffs into the sea.