# When good adults believe bad science (share your stories) **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 30, 2005, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738 "2005-12-30T16:52:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/141 "2006-01-03T06:20:17Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > I’ve mentioned this before here, but my grandmother refused to believe how a microwave oven actually works. She insisted that since it was an oven, it must have a heating element. When I explained that the food or water was bombarded by radio frequencies that vibrated the molecules, creating friction, to cook or boil the contents from the inside out, she got mad at me and told her I was making it up and telling her a bunch of bullshit because I thought she was a gullible old lady. When my parents first heard about ovens that would cook a roast in 20 minutes they hooted and hollered with scornful laughter. “Why any oven that would get hot enough to cook that fast would melt the stove.” ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/142 "2006-01-03T06:31:14Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > …my grandmother refused to believe how a microwave oven actually works…When I explained that the food or water was bombarded by radio frequencies that vibrated the molecules, **creating friction** , to cook or boil the contents from the inside out,… Minor nitpick by an overly pedantic engineer, but the heating isn’t due to friction; the water molecules do “vibrate” in response to the radio-freqency waves, but that vibration is a thermal effect, i.e. the vibration is what causes the embedded water to heat up, and then heat is then conducted to the adjacent nonwater molecules. No friction involved. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![fishbicycle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aeb1de/32.png) [@fishbicycle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fishbicycle)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/143 "2006-01-03T06:39:23Z")
Thanks for the correction. Grandma would have got that even less. ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/144 "2006-01-03T06:48:29Z")
I had a roommate once whom I couldn’t convince about probability and statistics. We spent an evening discussing this once, 20 years ago. If a perfectly regular coin has been flipped and turned up heads 10 times in a row, what are the chances it will be flipped to tails on the next flip. 50%. 1/2. Yimmy, if you’re out there, send me an e-mail. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/145 "2006-01-03T09:03:28Z")
> [@levdrakon](#): > > “Don’t eat the Bay leaf, it’s poison!” What the hell was she thinking?? It’s not poisonous to cook it into your soup, it’s only poison if you take it out and eat it? I have a book on my shelf claiming that bay leaves are in some way poisonous to actually ingest - I think it claims that powdered bay leaf is banned as a food additive and I believe it claims that male sterility is one of the risks. I can’t find any documentary evidence to support these claims though and it looks like it might just be something that grew out of the usual confusion over the term ‘laurel’ (a word used to describe several different, rather unrelated plants, some of which are poisonous). Some folks in one of the offices I support all came in, breathless with excitement one day, _because it turns out the moon landings were faked!_ (that loathsome Fox programme had apparently been vomited onto the airwaves the night before). I was quizmaster at a community association fundraiser a while back and I inserted a ‘just for fun’ true or false round for people to look at while they ate their meal; more than three-quarters of them answered ‘True’ for _‘A duck’s quack does not echo, and nobody knows why’_. Needless to say, I put them straight rather emphatically. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/146 "2006-01-03T09:13:39Z")
> [@Tikki](#): > > My Dad, an otherwise erudite person and a guy whom I greatly love and respect, tried to get me to believe this all through this fall. “You can feel all that cold air flowing in when I open the blinds, can’t you?” says he. > > “Yes,” says I, “but that doesn’t mean the blinds are keeping all the cold air in between the blinds and window. It’s leaking between the slats and out the bottom all the time. You just don’t notice it because the electric floorboard heaters get a chance to heat it up before it gets to you.” > > “No, I’m keeping the place warmer by keeping the blinds closed.” > > “No, you have the illusion of keeping the place warmer by keeping the blinds closed, Dad. If they were curtains, then I might concede that you are keeping the place warmer because curtains present a more solid, though not impermeable, front against the cold. I fail to see how 50 or so loosely-fitting parts per window can manage to do the same job.” I actually think you’re wrong about this one; trapping a perfectly static layer of air between the cold window and the warm room is ideal, but in practice almost impossible to achieve; _impeding the circulation_ of air across the cold window is a second-best solution that most of us implement to varying degrees of success. If these venetian blinds impede the flow of air across/off the window better when they are in the closed position than they do in the open position, then keeping them closed will help to maintain the warmth in the room. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/147 "2006-01-03T09:18:11Z")
> [@Savannah](#): > > But how come you never see a dandelion in transition? I only see yellow flowers or fluffy seed heads. I never see a dandelion in the middle of changing from one form to another! It is quite mysterious, you must admit. The flower bud closes while the transformation takes place, then it reopens to release the seeds on their parachutes. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Jones](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/96bed5/32.png) [@Cat\_Jones](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Jones)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/148 "2006-01-03T09:31:59Z")
> [@cbawlmer](#): > > My husband was born in a German hospital, and the nurses there removed all the flowers and other plants sent to her by friends and relatives on the grounds that the plants would suck the oxygen out of the room. And Germans are supposed to know their science! They used to do that in British hospitals too, but only at night - night is when those pesky plants do their oxygen stealing! Seriously tho’ I don’t think this quite counts as ‘bad science’ just ‘old science’ - I mean I don’t know how old your husband is but my parents talk about this happening 40-50 years ago, biology has moved on _a lot_ since then (I looked at stuff on a cellular level in A level biology that my Mum, a qualified doctor had never heard of), if the nurses were still doing it now, then we’d have cause to worry. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/149 "2006-01-03T09:40:31Z")
Many people believe they can convert someone to a different sexuality by having sex with them. A girl I know is hopelessly in love with her gay best friend; she’s a diehard Christian and all about chastity and morality etc. She lost her virginity to him, and he lost his to her (he hadn’t been with a guy yet, either), because she thought that if he got her rocks off in her he would magically turn straight and love her forever. If anything, it really just made him hunger for The Cock. He has sex with a man and tells her about it and she cries, lather, rinse, repeat. She still insists that he can be cured, andg that he’s not using her. She’s bought him an iPod and given him all-expenses-paid vacations out of her account and doesn’t understand why he doesn’t love her yet. One of my friends in middle school had a grandmother who steadfastly believes that electric nastiness flows from video game consoles through video game controllers into game players’ hands and then radiates through their bodies and morally rots them from the inside. A family friend won’t drink soda because it’s “bad for her liver”, but she has no qualms with getting snockered on Friday night. She had to read signs for her ex-husband when he drove the car. He had pretty bad vision, but refused to get glasses because he thought that wearing glasses would make his future children nearsighted. One of my dad’s coworkers, a highly intelligent engineer, is way into the Q-Ray bracelet and gives everyone pamphlets about it, and wears his everywhere. What gets me is that people contrive _extremely specific_ fantasies about gods and metals and unquantifiable electric charges and such and assign truth to them. > [@BluePitBull](#): > > The person I was talking about, thought the reason was to escape persecution. I’d be glad to have a lot of friends who were only that ignorant. A lot of people really believe that Jay-sus Chraaast was born on Dec 25 and that the Liberal Bastards are trying to destroy the significance of that. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/150 "2006-01-03T15:32:14Z")
> [@NicePete](#): > > I had a roommate once whom I couldn’t convince about probability and statistics. > > We spent an evening discussing this once, 20 years ago. If a perfectly regular coin has been flipped and turned up heads 10 times in a row, what are the chances it will be flipped to tails on the next flip. > > 50%. 1/2. > > Yimmy, if you’re out there, send me an e-mail. Technically trained people aren’t necessarily immune. A physicist (Masters degree) argued at length that the statistics of dice even up on a daily basis. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/151 "2006-01-03T15:56:57Z")
> [@fishbicycle](#): > > …When I explained that the food or water was bombarded by radio frequencies that vibrated the molecules, creating friction, to cook or boil the contents from the inside out… I thought it had been shown that microwave ovens do not actually cook from the inside out, but I forgot where I saw this. _Mythbusters_, maybe? So, since we’re dealing with facts in this thread, I went out and found a cite from the federal gummint: [Microwave Oven Radiation](http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/consumer/microwave.html): > [@US FDA](#): > > Although heat is produced directly in the food, microwave ovens do not cook food from the “inside out.” When thick foods like roasts are cooked, the outer layers are heated and cooked primarily by microwaves while the inside is cooked mainly by the slower conduction of heat from the hot outer layers. Continuing my search, I found a far more reliable source of information: our very own [**Q.E.D.**](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmicrowave2.html), who offers a somewhat more nuanced explanation: > [@Q.E.D.](#): > > If a food is of uniform consistency and high in water content, most of the microwave energy will be absorbed by the water near the surface before it gets into the center of the food, and the food will heat from the outside in, as with traditional ovens. On the other hand, if the surface of the food is drier than the center, as with bread or a baked potato, the center will heat up faster. You can see this clearly if you microwave foods with a dry outer crust and a moist filling, like a McDonald’s apple pie. If you cook it for about 20 seconds in a typical oven, you’ll find that the crust is fairly cool to warm, while the filling can be quite hot. So I guess the original statement is partly true, although not as a general principle, which is what many people seem to believe. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/152 "2006-01-03T16:17:11Z")
The thought that it’s poison may also have come from the fact that you should remove it before serving your soup/sauce/whatever, because it CAN be dangerous to eat/swallow. They get very tough and leathery when cooked, and can be a chocking hazard for some people. So it’s possible that, over time, they knew they should remove the leaf, but didn’t know _why_. Eventually, they either assumed because it was poisonous, or someone else told them that was the reason. ---
**Author:** ![silk1976](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@silk1976](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silk1976)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/153 "2006-01-03T16:25:55Z")
My grandmother, who just the other week told me that she used to be able to look at the sun without hurting her eyes when she was a kid. She used this argument as factual evidence for global warming (which is a separate discussion all-together). Has nothing to do with her 80 yr old eyes (or the fact that its just not true) She also believes that global warming occurs because the earth is closer to the sun then it was when she was a kid (and thus another reason why it hurts your eyes to look at it). Of course, this is due to all the rockets that humans have sent into the atmosphere. Cuz, ya know, it moves the earth closer and makes it spin faster every time. Ok - so she’s 80 yrs old and can be forgiven for some of that. Rockets and science aren’t her specialty - so I’ll give her a mulligen. The real recent kicker has been my ground school instructor recently. For someone who is a CFI, I would expect him to know the material he is teaching. According to him, it is a misconception that there is less oxygen at altitude. He maintains that there is the same amount of oxygen, but the lower pressure is the reason why fighter pilots need supplemental oxygen. He seems to have confused the whole absolute/relative thing. Same percentage of oxygen, but less of an absolute amount. Oh yeah, and turbochargers and superchargers allow prop planes to fly higher because it increases the density of air **around** the prop, allowing it to grab a bigger bite of air when your at altitude and the air is thinner. Last I checked, there isn’t any mystical or magical shell surrounding the air around a prop to keep it pressurized. Just about anyone who blames a social problem on the liberals or conservatives. That gets on my nerves. As if any social issue is that simple, and as if either side of the argument has a vindictive agenda. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/154 "2006-01-03T16:37:16Z")
This just in: [the health risks of microwave ovens.](http://www.laleva.cc/environment/microwave.html) In my continuing efforts to fight ignorance, I stumbled across this interesting “report” which makes the following fascinating statement in attempting to “prove” that microwave ovens are dangerous: > [@Anthony Wayne and Lawrence Newell](#): > > Microwaves from the sun are based on principles of pulsed direct current (DC) that don’t create frictional heat; microwave ovens use alternating current (AC) creating frictional heat. Further on we learn that microwave ovens were invented by the Nazis, that there is “a breakdown of the human ‘life-energy field’ in those who were exposed to microwave ovens while in operation, with side-effects to the human energy field of increasingly longer duration,” and that “continually eating food processed from a microwave oven causes long term - permanent - brain damage by ‘shorting out’ electrical impulses in the brain [de-polarizing or de-magnetizing the brain tissue].” The report is not exactly a laugh riot, and contains many (apparently) factually accurate statements (the speed of light is 186,000 mps last time I looked). But it relies on vague generalities (microwaving food breaks apart cells and creates unnamed carcinogens) and pseudo-scientific jargon (polarity, molecular breakdown) to create a sense of alarm in unsophisticated readers. ---
**Author:** ![Finagle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/b19c9b/32.png) [@Finagle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Finagle)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/155 "2006-01-03T16:59:58Z")
> [@NicePete](#): > > I had a roommate once whom I couldn’t convince about probability and statistics. > > We spent an evening discussing this once, 20 years ago. If a perfectly regular coin has been flipped and turned up heads 10 times in a row, what are the chances it will be flipped to tails on the next flip. > > 50%. 1/2. In a perfect world, this would be true. But in the real world, if I were a forced to bet on a coin that had turned up heads ten times in a row, I would choose heads, because there’s probably something not right about that coin. ---
**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/156 "2006-01-03T17:18:39Z")
**Left Hand of Dorkness** , I suspect your friend with the odd beliefs about water may have overdosed on _[What the Bleep Do We Know?](http://www.whatthebleep.com/)_ which is not a movie and a book. The movie mentions the experiments Dr. Masaru Emoto with frozen water crystals. The movie was fascinating. I haven’t read the book yet, but I was given it for Christmas (in fact, I brought it with me to respond to this post) and I should be able to report back on it later. CJ ---
**Author:** ![wolfstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/d6d6ee/32.png) [@wolfstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfstu)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/157 "2006-01-03T17:23:24Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I actually think you’re wrong about this one; trapping a perfectly static layer of air between the cold window and the warm room is ideal, but in practice almost impossible to achieve; _impeding the circulation_ of air across the cold window is a second-best solution that most of us implement to varying degrees of success. > If these venetian blinds impede the flow of air across/off the window better when they are in the closed position than they do in the open position, then keeping them closed will help to maintain the warmth in the room. Further to that, a large window on a cold night can be a major source of radiation heat loss. It’s not just conducting heat from the interior air across the glass to the outside. Closing curtains or blinds greatly impedes the radiation exchange between warm objects in the room and cold ones outside. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/158 "2006-01-03T17:29:32Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > Technically trained people aren’t necessarily immune. A physicist (Masters degree) argued at length that the statistics of dice even up on a daily basis. The _statistics_ of a frequently-flipped coin _will_ tend to produce even results. The _probability_ of any one flip remains unchanged. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/159 "2006-01-03T17:38:17Z")
> [@GorillaMan](#): > > The _statistics_ of a frequently-flipped coin _will_ tend to produce even results. The _probability_ of any one flip remains unchanged. Sure, the books are balanced every day. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2006, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738/160 "2006-01-03T17:53:23Z")
And of course you do know that although the ratio of heads to tails approaches .5 as the number of tosses increases the absolute difference between the number of heads and the number of tails increases continually. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-good-adults-believe-bad-science-share-your-stories/337738.md?page=9)