It’s highly possible I liked Vox’s recent article 7 Bad Science And Health Ideas That Should Die With 2018 due to confirmation bias. I already agreed with the writers’ assessment that all seven of the ideas mentioned need to go away, though I like to think I came to those seven conclusions separately and after considering “both sides’ of each issue.

But this blog entry isn’t about whether I liked the article, nor is it about how false each of the seven ideas actually is. This blog entry is about a few things the writers might have missed (or left out due to space or editing restraints).

One : Fighting Climate Change Will Hurt The Economy

This first section easily busts the myth that trying to mitigate climate change will somehow hurt the economy. It is well known that climate change itself is hurting (and will increasingly hurt) the economy, that working to lessen climate change will save trillions of dollars, and that the business of “going green” really is a mostly-untapped fountain of money just waiting to be made.

But what the writers missed is that when wealthy people, Republican leaders, and climate change deniers in general say “the economy”, they don’t actually mean “the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money” (definition). What they actually mean is “the ability of already-wealthy people to generate, collect, and hang on to more wealth — in the short term”. And fighting climate change most certain hurts that. They mean that when we all start switching to solar cells and/or reducing our power consumption, the wealthy men who own coal companies will be unable to continue raking in short-term profits. They mean that if we drive less and/or buy more fuel-efficient (or electric) vehicles, then the wealthy men who own petroleum companies will go bankrupt. And so on.

Very occasionally, someone actually means “average people will lose jobs”, and this is of course an obvious risk of changing a fundamental underpinning of society. Men and women who work on oil rigs will certainly lose their jobs if the rest of us stop buying petroleum products. But don’t think for a minute that this is a good reason to keep extracting and burning petroleum.

Two : Juuling Is Cool

This section actually refers to vaping (because “juuling” isn’t a word), and clearly points out how inhaling nicotine from an “electronic cigarette” is (as far as we know) just as unhealthy as inhaling nicotine from a traditional cigarette.

But by using the word “cool”, I think the writers negated their own point. It IS actually increasingly popular, especially among teens, which is kind of the definition of “cool”. I would like someone, anyone, to find a single instance in history when a teen stopped doing something they perceive as cool just because three adult writers assured them it’s not cool.

Three : Neanderthals Were Savages

The writers cite a number of recent discoveries that show (1) Neanderthals weren’t any more savage than the Homo sapiens living at the time, and (2) perhaps more importantly, the Neanderthals didn’t actually go extinct but instead interbred with Homo sapiens and their genes continue to live on today in billions of humans.

This one isn’t going away, though. My entire life, “neanderthal” has been in somewhat regular use as a disparaging term describing boorish or uncivilized behavior, and also slow or illogical thinking. Even with continuing education about the actual facts of Neanderthals, I don’t think this misconception is going away any time soon.

Four : The Marshmallow Test Is A Good Indicator Of Future Success

The writers note a much more recent study that (mostly) debunks the infamous “marshmallow tests” of the 1960s and ‘70s. The recent study shows that nearly all correlations disappear in the marshmallow test if you control for family background, intelligence scores, gender, etc.

I think they missed multiple things here: (1) I’m willing to bet most laypersons can’t actually tell you anything about the marshmallow test without looking it up first — which means it’s not really a persistent myth that needs killing. (2) I don’t think most people put much stock in the original findings anyway. (3) Perhaps most importantly, the original studies didn’t actually say there was any correlation between success at the marshmallow test and “success” later in life — it only correlated with certain measurable factors like SAT scores, body-mass-index, etc., all of which turn out to be related to the wealth of a child’s family and not their ability to resist a marshmallow temptation at age 5.

Additionally, the writers missed a good chance to point out that the even bigger misconception here is that “success” automatically means achieving a certain level of wealth. In fact, the misconception is so common that it’s become one of the dictionary definitions: “gaining of fame or prosperity”. Traditionally, the word success refers to “the achievement of something desired, planned or attempted” — in other words, success depends on the goal. If one’s goal is to achieve wealth or fame, then achieving that is indeed success. But if instead one’s goal is to be relatively free of strife and stress, regardless of the level of wealth, then success is unrelated to money, and could in fact be the opposite of fame (obscurity).

Five : Immigrants Pose A Disease Risk

Apparently Fox News and others have been warning that immigrants from Central and South America pose a risk of smallpox and leprosy, claims that simply aren’t true. This one, I couldn’t believe was a widespread enough “myth” to be worth debunking here, but the writers did a good enough job of fact-checking the silly claims.

I mean, it stands to reason that people coming to the U.S. from elsewhere might also (on rare occasions) bring with them exotic diseases or ailments that are more common elsewhere, contributing to sickness in the U.S. But, as Vox points out, most people who come here from elsewhere are Americans, not immigrants. We travel outside our borders, get sick, and then return home — most of us with zero medical screening whatsoever. (Migrants, on the other hand, are screened for certain communicable diseases.)

If we’re truly worried about bringing diseases from regions X, Y, and Z, then any Americans who travel to X, Y, and Z ought to be screened when they return home. And those Americans number in the millions each year, much more dangerous than the 4,000 migrants Fox News was so worried about.

Six : Exposure To Other Points Of View Reduces Partisanship

Vox didn’t mention it, but I’ve seen plenty of these claims in The New York Times and other media outlets in the past two years. In short, the claim is: “If you just get to know someone who disagrees with you, maybe you’ll disagree with them less”. I found it absurd when I first heard it, and I’m glad this Vox piece cited studies that show it really isn’t true.

I mean, it might be true of some things that really aren’t important to you, or things you’re on the fence about. For example, I once said something like “I can’t see the value in adults playing hours of video games”. And someone I know — who likes to play video games — pointed out it’s just his hobby; he spends about the same amount of hours gaming as other adults spend scrapbooking or watching pro football. Okay, so my mind was changed. More power to you.

But when something is one of your core values, it seems absurd to me that increased exposure to the opposition will make you more accepting. For example, I’m a feminist. No amount of hanging around misogynists is going to make me less feminist. If anything, it’s going to generate a visceral pronounced dislike that I didn’t feel before.

Seven

This one I’d never heard of, and therefore find it difficult to believe very many other laypersons had heard of either.

Overall

One thing missed in the entire idea of the column is that myths rarely die. Humans — as a group — have a strange and ridiculous capacity to continue believing things long known to not be true. Like astrology, for example. Or “a gun is just a tool, like a hammer”.

Some mistaken beliefs never gain enough traction to live on through the generations. They might spread through a handful of people, but they’re ridiculous enough that they never need debunking. But others spread quickly, often assisted by mistaken news reports or repeated by popular characters in movies, shows, and books. There is level of critical mass that, once reached, means the idea is going to live on, even if not in the majority of people.

The “Moon landing is fake” conspiracy theory, for example, reached a critical mass early in its life and therefore continues to make the rounds. In 1999, Gallup poll showed that six percent of Americans believed the Apollo moon landings were faked. In 2012, it was up to seven percent — a relatively stable and flat trajectory. Some myths spread farther and faster than that one and thus are much more difficult to eradicate.

Conclusion

I’m convinced Carl Sagan was correct when he opined that the best way to avoid believing a false idea is to vaccinate oneself before the false idea shows up. That way, it will never take hold in the first place. Develop a skeptical mindset. Challenge new ideas, even (and especially) ones that immediately seem plausible to you.