8 Popular 'Science Myths' Where The Truth Is Way Cooler

Sometimes science fact is better than science fiction.

mythbusters title
Discovery Channel

There are loads of myths and misconceptions that spring up around science. Sometimes these come from poor scientific understanding, sometimes they come from wilful misleading, but you can pretty much guarantee that everyone you know will believe at least one of them to be true.

It could be something as harmless as believing that the Great Wall of China is the only structure visible from space (it isn't), or something as sinister as thinking that vaccines cause autism (they don't).

More often than not, these myths perpetuate simply because they're much more exciting than the truth. How boring would movie space battles be if they were all perfectly silent? Who really wants to know that their juice cleanse will not actually fix their problems? And who really, truly believes that the five second rule isn't a load of hogwash?

We believe those ones because they're much more interesting and easily digestible that the boring old facts.

However, there are occasions when the truth, in all of its cumbersome complexity, is more fascinating than the myth. Science, after all, is all about exploring the weird and the wonderful, so there has to be a point at which the truth is better than the lie.

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