SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the even-smart-people-can-perpetuate-stupid dept.
False beliefs and wishful thinking about the human experience are common. They are hurting people — and holding back science.
[...] These myths often blossom from a seed of a fact — early detection does save lives for some cancers — and thrive on human desires or anxieties, such as a fear of death. But they can do harm by, for instance, driving people to pursue unnecessary treatment or spend money on unproven products. They can also derail or forestall promising research by distracting scientists or monopolizing funding. And dispelling them is tricky.
Scientists should work to discredit myths, but they also have a responsibility to try to prevent new ones from arising, says Paul Howard-Jones, who studies neuroscience and education at the University of Bristol, UK. "We need to look deeper to understand how they come about in the first place and why they're so prevalent and persistent."
Some dangerous myths get plenty of air time: vaccines cause autism, HIV doesn't cause AIDS. But many others swirl about, too, harming people, sucking up money, muddying the scientific enterprise — or simply getting on scientists' nerves. Here, Nature looks at the origins and repercussions of five myths that refuse to die.
These are some of the science myths that will not die.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2015, @08:45AM
The ignorance on the last myth is stunning.
Yes while the growth rate % is slowing down compared to past rates, The past rates were against a smaller number as well.
They ignore the fact that all that food is basically just pouring petrochemicals onto fields. No let's ignore the fact that every 7 out of 10 calories* of food now is almost directly converted from fossil fuels which will not last. So there goes this 'over abundance of food'.
Really if you look into it what they do to call it a myth is pretty damn stupid. Then again it IS a ghastly number to know that 7 out of every 10 people you see alive today is only alive because our ingenuity at turning a one time bounty of a reaction of organic matter with normal geological processes. So i can forgive them for refusing to look into the abyss.
*calories are a unit of energy and because of that, can be converted from or to other units of energy mathematically.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday December 20 2015, @09:35AM
No let's ignore the fact that every 7 out of 10 calories* of food now is almost directly converted from fossil fuels which will not last.
Almost all of those calories comes from sunlight converted to chemically stored energy in the plant. And "fossil fuels" means natural gas near exclusively which as a hydrogen source allows one to fix nitrogen as ammonia.
So i can forgive them for refusing to look into the abyss.
Yea, right. By 2050, virtually all population growth will be in Africa. By 2100, we'll no longer have a growing population on any continent. That's my prediction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2015, @09:54AM
Calories of food is not unit of food energy.
It is a fudge factor people use because they dont know how we get energy from food.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 20 2015, @05:02PM
No let's ignore the fact that every 7 out of 10 calories* of food now is almost directly converted from fossil fuels
That sounds like bullshit to me, fellow AC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Nuke on Sunday December 20 2015, @05:55PM
The facts remain that the population is rapidly increasing, the land area is not increasing, and the resources are rapidly decreasing. It is not a matter of "solving" poverty. Making people less poor actually makes the situation worse as they are able to buy and use up resources more rapidly. And it will not matter how rich you are when there is nothing left to buy.