11 ms·

Ask HN: What are examples of common beliefs conclusively invalidated by data?

42 points by flappyeagle 4y ago

The belief in the “hot hand” in sports is not an example of this. It seems to be “proven” or “disproven” every couple of years.

getthisgone 4y ago
pushingice 4y ago
That "learning styles" exist: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myth-is-still-prevalent-among-educators-and-it-shows-no-sign-of-going-away https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myt... https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/ https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-... https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth...
soueuls 4y ago
That in most cases diversity is not a strength. - it brings negative performance when the diversity is age related - it brings negative performance outside of tech/knowledge intensive jobs when it’s gender/ethnicity related - Only educational diversity seems to bring positive results
fsflover 4y ago
GMO is harmful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Health_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Heal... Bio/organic food is healthier than the regular food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Health_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Health_and_safety
- lamontcg 4y ago
  > currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food What if "conventional food" is bad and has been bred for things like appearance and shelf-stability over nutrition?
- ollien 4y ago
  > Bio/organic food is healthy This is misleading from the link you sent. > There is little scientific evidence of benefit or harm to human health from a diet high in organic food, and conducting any sort of rigorous experiment on the subject is very difficult It would be more correct to say "healthier than non-organic food". I read your message at first thinking you meant organics were unhealthy :)
  - fsflover 4y ago
    You are right, thanks. I edited my post.
- magillax 4y ago
  Yeah I don’t think you can say that about GMOs - besides the issues of seed patenting/subsequent litigation and self terminating seeds - the EPA was just ordered to re assess the safety of roundup. And there’s plenty of studies that show round up probably isn’t great. https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-020-0296-8 https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...
  - djbusby 4y ago
    [deleted]
    - Loughla 4y ago
      What? What corporation would order that? That's such a crucial, money making chemical that the EPA buried the problems with it the first time. What are you trying to get at with this statement?
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    Roundup is an herbicide.
    - Loughla 4y ago
      Which is easily and widely used because of Roundup ready crops, GMO's.
  - flaviut 4y ago
    The paper you link isn't a study, it is a "discussion", and the author also states the following: > The emails further demonstrated that since 2005 Monsanto has attempted to destroy my team’s work and reputation, in particular by recruiting third-party, supposedly independent experts at the highest levels to voice ghost-written and biased arguments (Henry Miller or Wallace Hayes, for instance [10,11,12]), who did not, however, publicly disclose their links with Monsanto I'm not saying that the author is wrong, or that their criticisms of the other study are meritless (I have 0 experience in this field), especially with the widespread ethics concerns they point out. But this particular paper doesn't draw any conclusions.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Weird. Both of these should be textbook examples of how to tell lies using only "scientific" truths. It's very easy to look at both at these data points and think "oh, so it's okay to just go and support GMO and ignore organic farmers". In reality though, the criticism against GMO is how its wide-scale adoption destroys genetic diversity, and how this lack of diversity is a huge potential source of systemic risks.
  - mickael-kerjean 4y ago
    GMO was banned in France after a study was made on rats showing all sort of health issues: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044955/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044955/
  - lobocinza 4y ago
    Yeah but of the thousand of times I heard "GMOs are bad", 999 were followed by "to your health".
  - fsflover 4y ago
    You did not provide any links.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      What links do you need?! By definition, GMO crops all come from the same genetic seeds.
      - aidenn0 4y ago
        Links showing that the primary criticism is as you say; most critics of GMO and proponents of organic that I know are all about "only putting natural stuff in my body"
        rglullis 4y ago
        > "only putting natural stuff in my body" That's not a belief, this is a stated preference, and you would be fully entitled to ignore it as "invalid criticism" due to the confusion between facts and opinions. The belief that you are actually asking me to "back up with links" is that GMO reduces genetic diversity. Do you really need a link for that?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chadash 4y ago
  The title of this post says "conclusively invalidated by data" and I'm not sure anything is conclusive when it comes to organic food. The evidence that the Moderna vaccine lowers the risk of death due to COVID is conclusive in the sense that a controlled, double blind study was performed and we have determined with some degree of certainty (>99.9%) that the vaccine is effective. But it's relatively easy to design an experiment. How would you even go about designing an experiment for organic food. Giving a vaccine is binary... it was given on two occasions or it wasn't. With organic food, if there are benefits to it, they are most likely over a much longer term. So you'd need to police a participant's eating habits for years or maybe even decades to test your hypothesis. It's not a practical experiment to perform. At best we can say "there's no scientific evidence that organic food is better for you than non-organic", but that's not the same as saying "we have concluded with 99.9% certainty that organic food is no better for you than non-organic food". Certain things just can't be tested effectively, especially things as complicated as diet. This is why dietary recommendations change so frequently. Still, not everything requires conclusive science. There's never been a controlled experiment showing that parachutes save skydivers' lives. But sometimes common sense trumps the need for scientific inquiry. EDIT: Please don't read this as anti-science. On the contrary, science is great for answering certain questions, but has limitations for other questions.
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > GMO is harmful On the basis of the article that you linked to, I think it would be more accurate to say that "currently available GMO food is not thought to be harmful to humans." There is nothing inherent in genetic modification that prevents if from being used to create food that is harmful when consumed by people (or animals) - whether due to toxicity or negative dietary effects. There probably isn't much incentive to do the former (except maybe as a weapon of war or terrorism), but engineering unhealthy but addictive foods isn't hard to imagine. Similarly, theres nothing in the technology that prevents it from being used to develop plants or animals that cause harm to their environment - for example by runaway reproduction, excessive use of resources like water, affecting species equilibria, etc. I personally wouldn't be worried about eating a GMO foodstuff, but I'm extremely unhappy about the environmental impact of ideas like terminator seeds or engineered pesticide resistance that leads to over-use of pesticides, and I wouldn't call them "safe".
  - fsflover 4y ago
    > On the basis of the article that you linked to, I think it would be more accurate to say that "currently available GMO food is not thought to be harmful to humans." I would actually say instead that "there is no reason to think that genetic modification itself introduces any additional danger to the food". Of course you can create dangerous food using GMO. You can also just poison it, too.
- phkahler 4y ago
  Also on the flip side - the notion the GMO are all the same risk. This should be obviously untrue.
mistermann 4y ago
The inverse is far easier, and I'd say even more interesting: common beliefs that are not conclusively supported by data.
- NateEag 4y ago
  Beliefs that are invalidated by data are guaranteed to be wrong. Beliefs not conclusively supported by data may be wrong. Some such beliefs turn out to be essential to human functioning, like "My life is not just an extended dream or hallucination," "I have the ability to choose what I do," and "It is wrong to murder other people for their possessions." I'd say the former is more interesting than the latter.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Oh there are plenty of interesting and innocuous ones in either category... Perhaps the most important part is almost no one cares what is true on certain classes of questions.
    - NateEag 4y ago
      > Perhaps the most important part is almost no one cares what is true on certain classes of questions. My experience has been slightly different, which is that almost no one is willing to accept that they could be wrong about certain classes of questions. This has similar effects to no one caring what is actually true, but it is not quite the same thing.
      - mistermann 4y ago
        As I see it this is a specialized version of what I'm talking about, no? I completely agree that that is one of the most harmful manifestations though.
        NateEag 4y ago
        I don't see it that way. To me, not caring what is true is exactly that - not caring. Your actions might be rooted in truth or not, but you don't care. You get your dopamine hits and who gives a shit how they came to happen? Being certain that you're right is quite different. There, you care very intensely about what's true, but you're so confident in your knowledge of what's true that you can't even conceive of being wrong. Both of them lead to pretty terrible behaviors, but the underlying reasons for those behaviors are quite different, IMO.
blakesterz 4y ago
The "Wrecked by success" thing was just here yesterday, I think that fits your question? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31817677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31817677
mrob 4y ago
Searing meat seals in the juices. Wikipedia's only citation for this being false is a commercially published book[0], but there are various reports of experimental testing, e.g.: https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-prime-rib-beef-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-prime-rib-beef-recipe https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5699-searing-steak https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5699-searing-steak [0] McGee, Harold (1990), The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore, page 13, "The Searing Truth"
- froggertoaster 4y ago
  Kenji Lopez-Alt's amazing book, The Food Lab, mentions this and so much more.
zeroonetwothree 4y ago
People choose to do things to maximize happiness https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/happiness-satisfaction-work-life-balance-leisure-activities.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/happiness-satisfaction-...
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Not to be pendantic but I guess since we are talking about science and data, that article suggests to me that people do intend to do things to maximize happiness, but that they’re not very good at it, not that they originally seek out to not maximize happiness. There are some in things in there that could imply it but it doesn’t seem to go there.
  - CWuestefeld 4y ago
    I think the difficulty is that we all have many desires that are in equilibrium. We might say that we want to quit smoking, or lose weight, or whatever, but in practice that desire has to overcome other desires, and particularly the individual's time preference, to come to a new equilibrium. The fact that the new equilibrium doesn't shut out all other desires in favor of a single focus shouldn't be surprising at all.
jackmott42 4y ago
In America: "Don't swim for 30 minutes after eating or you will cramp" "You should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day" In Korea: "Sleeping with a fan on is dangerous as it will steal your breath"
- floor_ 4y ago
  Blood flows to your digestive system after eating to help process the food taking it away from you legs and arms.
- juancampa 4y ago
  The Diving Reflex could explain the first one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex
- yakubin 4y ago
  > "Don't swim for 30 minutes after eating or you will cramp" That's a new one for me, but I'm from Europe. I spent my childhood on rivers and lakes, rapidly alternating between food and swimming (and other things). No cramps due to food (scarcely any at all to be honest). I've had a lot more cramps in swimming pools than in natural water, now that I think about it. > "You should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day" I could believe that. I used to drink ~4 glasses a day, but it made me feel like a lizard (without really realizing the cause at the time). Now I drink more than 8 and feel much better.
  - Adrig 4y ago
    I'm from Europe too, and growing up I was told to not swim for 3 hours after lunch or I could literally die...
    - yakubin 4y ago
      There also exist guidelines that you should eat something every 3 hours at least. Conclusion: you mustn't swim. :)
- mikkergp 4y ago
bkraz 4y ago
"The world is getting worse" is a belief perpetuated by the media and repeated by many people to explain their own unhappiness. However, many important indicators show things are getting better globally https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health...
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  These are mostly international statistics, and a lot of the progress being made is first China and now Africa and India catching up with the west. And that's great. In the United States, however, things have been going somewhat backwards since the mid 70's. The millennial generation is poorer than their parents were at the same age. Civil rights are beginning to get rolled back. The political situation is fraught. There are also, as others have pointed out, a number of red flashing danger signs coming from the environment. The earth is limited, and we're treating it as if it's infinite. So, from my point of view, here, the "world is getting worse" belief has some justification.
- mpfundstein 4y ago
  better for the people. for wildlife and nature its a different story though...
  - bkraz 4y ago
    Not necessarily disagreeing, but do you have some metrics to show the scale and speed of the problem?
    - vehemenz 4y ago
      You're shifting the burden to the parent asking for metrics for something that is common knowledge amongst middle schoolers.
      - bkraz 4y ago
        There are many metrics. I was mainly interested to know which ones would be selected. The whole thread is about using data instead of widely held beliefs...
web007 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions should get you started.
larrydag 4y ago
The Flaw of Averages states that: Plans based on the assumption that average conditions will occur are wrong on average. https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/flawaverages1025.html https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/flawaverages1025.html
gigatexal 4y ago
Covid vaccine hesitancy is a good example.
- Ancapistani 4y ago
  That's a strong position on a complex topic. There are plenty of reasons why some individuals might choose not to take a given vaccine. Some are rational, many are not.
  - gigatexal 4y ago
    Valid reasons to avoid COVID vaccines? Some were better than others but in general to get vaccinated is a no brainer.
randcraw 4y ago
"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." After being hit by a truck, surviving cancer, returning from a long war, or losing a child, experience (data) teaches you otherwise.
- caeril 4y ago
  Hormesis is definitely "a thing". Getting hit by a truck may injure you to the point of being permanently weakened, but a series of lesser traumas will generally improve your bone and connective tissue strength. The phrase is technically incorrect, but the spirit of it absolutely is.
- capableweb 4y ago
  I'm not sure you could "prove" either way on this with any amount of data. My personal anecdote is that hard times made easier times more fulfilling, and early hardship in my life has made later hardship much easier to deal with, in comparison to my peers. But there is also a limit to that of course. Not sure how I'd handle losing a child for example, or if I'd ever be able to overcome something like that.
nineplay 4y ago
'conclusively proven' is a high bar, particularly when paired with 'commonly'. If it has been conclusively proven false then why is it still commonly believed? It's pretty easy to say 'because I'm smarter than everyone else' but it's also a cop-out. Can it be proven for every single person or living entity? Can it be proven for every location? Can it be proven for every time, every season, every year. You can show the minuscule odds that someone will win the lottery yet people do win lotteries. What can you prove?
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  I imagine that for a while it was conclusively proven that heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter ones but it was still commonly believed. Maybe it is still widely believed today.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
granto 4y ago
Astrology/horoscopes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science
uniqueuid 4y ago
Hey, apparently the hot hand debate has been settled and there's actually solid evidence after all this time! [1] [2] [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=hot+hand&submit=Search https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=hot+hand&submit=Se... [2] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/07/09/hey-guess-what-there-really-is-a-hot-hand/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/07/09/hey-guess-...
Spartan112 4y ago
[flagged]
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for using HN primarily (exclusively, in fact?) for political and ideological battle. That's not allowed on HN, regardless of which ideology or politics you favor. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so please don't create accounts to do this with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fennecfoxen 4y ago
  > 1 Let’s see. It’s the 1980s, and our economy has been beset by 8-12% annual inflation, amidst general stagnation. Is there anything we could do in this situation to increase economic output, and thus the supply of goods and services, and maybe even increase employment at the same time? Might any of those, perhaps, be promoted through the investment of capital, in any manner at all? No!!! Like Nixon and Ford and Carter before us, we shall maintain very high taxes on the returns from capital investment, as we try subsidizing demand once again with stimulus spending! It’s sure to work this time.
  - Ensorceled 4y ago
    How does failed economic policies show that "Trickle down economics" works? We've had a long period of stagnate wages results in a real reduction in buying power for a large portion of the population, objectively the "trickle down" part is not working.
- _gabe_ 4y ago
  > Vaccines causing long-term damages more than Covid while Covid causes long-covid with long term damages 1 in 10 times and vaccines cause long-term damages 1 in 100,000 times. Do you know what long term is? We literally don't have enough data to determine which way this will go. According to the NIH they're collecting long term data that will end after 3 years of study[0]. I'm old enough to remember that COVID-19 started around November of 2019. The current date is June of 2022, if my math hasn't failed me, we still haven't hit 3 years of having COVID. Further, the vaccine came out in December of 2020. It's stupid to try and say that the vaccine is perfectly safe long term, the same way it's stupid to say it's dangerous long term. We literally just do not know. And from that study you listed on trans folks regretting transition: > Thirty-nine percent (39%) of respondents experienced serious psychological distress in the month before completing the survey (based on the Kessler 6 Psychological Distress Scale), compared with only 5% of the U.S. population. > Forty percent (40%) have attempted suicide in their lifetime, nearly nine times the rate in the U.S. population (4.6%). > Seven percent (7%) attempted suicide in the past year—nearly twelve times the rate in the U.S. population (0.6%). So apparently trans folks are only 9-12x more likely to attempt to commit suicide, but we're still being told that there's absolutely no harmful physiological effects. After all they don't regret it. [0]: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/clinical-trials/covid-19-recon-19-study https://www.niaid.nih.gov/clinical-trials/covid-19-recon-19-...
ttpphd 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
andyjohnson0 4y ago
Homeopathy.
muh_gradle 4y ago
A very recent one for me is that a lack of electrolytes is not a likely cause for cramps. The current science is still up in the air and the conclusion at the moment is "we still don't really know" https://www.painscience.com/articles/cramps-spasms-twitches-tremors.php https://www.painscience.com/articles/cramps-spasms-twitches-...
haunter 4y ago
"The human eye can't see past 30fps" Well with the advance of video gaming and high refresh rate displays that went out of the window quickly. Nowadays you even have 120hz displays on smartphones so easy to show someone the plain difference between 30fps and 120fps. At home I have a 240hz monitor and even the difference between 144fps and 240fps is noticeable albeit not that big difference as between 30fps and higher ones.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  Agree with your point, but high-refresh displays are nothing new. We were debunking this claim 20+ years ago. I gamed with a CRT that did 640x480 @ 300hz back in the 90s.
getthisgone 4y ago
CM30 4y ago
Vaccines causing autism seems like a good example. The original studies about this were fraudulent/wrong, and their effects have basically never been replicated since. Also that of people only using 10% of their brain, since it's more accurate that people use different parts of their brains at different times. No, using 100% wouldn't give you psychic powers or make you superhuman or whatever else some works of fiction and new age mystics might posit.
drcongo 4y ago
Omnipotent beings.
- DougN7 4y ago
  Lack of evidence isn’t the same as conclusive proof.
  - drcongo 4y ago
    It's logically impossible, which is proof. The being would be unable to create an immovable object, because if they're omnipotent they would be able to move the object, if they can't move the object then they are not omnipotent.
    - DougN7 4y ago
      Ok, sure, the paradox can’t be solved. But most of the time ‘omnipotent being’ would refer to a deity of some sort, and this only rules out an absolute deity of a very specific and narrow definition. I don’t think it applies to any of the deities I’ve come across in literature, religion or movies. I think the paradox itself is the problem.
      - drcongo 4y ago
        You're changing the rules. The thread asked "What are examples of common beliefs conclusively invalidated by data?", I replied "Omnipotent beings", now you're bringing in "deities" that you specifically have come across in "literature, religion or movies". Now, given that I don't know you, and nor presumably does the person who asked the original question, how are we to know which movies, religions and literature you have been exposed to in order to ascertain whether the deities that you specifically know about would be covered by my answer? Obviously we can't. So given that, maybe it broadens out to just "deities", but of course, not all deities are supposed to be omnipotent. Which is exactly why I didn't say "deities". So in summary, I was right and you've constructed a very bizarre new argument to try to justify your original, very wrong, nitpick.
clircle 4y ago
Increased spending on health care results in average increased health outcomes (e.g. lower all-cause mortality).

42 points by flappyeagle 4y ago

The belief in the “hot hand” in sports is not an example of this. It seems to be “proven” or “disproven” every couple of years.

getthisgone 4y ago

pushingice 4y ago

That "learning styles" exist: https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myth-is-still-prevalent-among-educators-and-it-shows-no-sign-of-going-away https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/02/04/the-learning-styles-myt... https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-state-teacher-license-prep-materials-debunked-theory/ https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-myth-learning-styles-... https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth-of-learning-styles/557687/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/the-myth...

soueuls 4y ago

That in most cases diversity is not a strength. - it brings negative performance when the diversity is age related - it brings negative performance outside of tech/knowledge intensive jobs when it’s gender/ethnicity related - Only educational diversity seems to bring positive results

fsflover 4y ago

GMO is harmful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Health_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_food#Heal... Bio/organic food is healthier than the regular food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Health_and_safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food#Health_and_safety

lamontcg 4y ago
> currently available food derived from GM crops poses no greater risk to human health than conventional food What if "conventional food" is bad and has been bred for things like appearance and shelf-stability over nutrition?
ollien 4y ago
> Bio/organic food is healthy This is misleading from the link you sent. > There is little scientific evidence of benefit or harm to human health from a diet high in organic food, and conducting any sort of rigorous experiment on the subject is very difficult It would be more correct to say "healthier than non-organic food". I read your message at first thinking you meant organics were unhealthy :)
- fsflover 4y ago
  You are right, thanks. I edited my post.
magillax 4y ago
Yeah I don’t think you can say that about GMOs - besides the issues of seed patenting/subsequent litigation and self terminating seeds - the EPA was just ordered to re assess the safety of roundup. And there’s plenty of studies that show round up probably isn’t great. https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-020-0296-8 https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...
- djbusby 4y ago
  [deleted]
  - Loughla 4y ago
    What? What corporation would order that? That's such a crucial, money making chemical that the EPA buried the problems with it the first time. What are you trying to get at with this statement?
- zeroonetwothree 4y ago
  Roundup is an herbicide.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    Which is easily and widely used because of Roundup ready crops, GMO's.
- flaviut 4y ago
  The paper you link isn't a study, it is a "discussion", and the author also states the following: > The emails further demonstrated that since 2005 Monsanto has attempted to destroy my team’s work and reputation, in particular by recruiting third-party, supposedly independent experts at the highest levels to voice ghost-written and biased arguments (Henry Miller or Wallace Hayes, for instance [10,11,12]), who did not, however, publicly disclose their links with Monsanto I'm not saying that the author is wrong, or that their criticisms of the other study are meritless (I have 0 experience in this field), especially with the widespread ethics concerns they point out. But this particular paper doesn't draw any conclusions.
rglullis 4y ago
Weird. Both of these should be textbook examples of how to tell lies using only "scientific" truths. It's very easy to look at both at these data points and think "oh, so it's okay to just go and support GMO and ignore organic farmers". In reality though, the criticism against GMO is how its wide-scale adoption destroys genetic diversity, and how this lack of diversity is a huge potential source of systemic risks.
- mickael-kerjean 4y ago
  GMO was banned in France after a study was made on rats showing all sort of health issues: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044955/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5044955/
- lobocinza 4y ago
  Yeah but of the thousand of times I heard "GMOs are bad", 999 were followed by "to your health".
- fsflover 4y ago
  You did not provide any links.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    What links do you need?! By definition, GMO crops all come from the same genetic seeds.
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      Links showing that the primary criticism is as you say; most critics of GMO and proponents of organic that I know are all about "only putting natural stuff in my body"
      - rglullis 4y ago
        > "only putting natural stuff in my body" That's not a belief, this is a stated preference, and you would be fully entitled to ignore it as "invalid criticism" due to the confusion between facts and opinions. The belief that you are actually asking me to "back up with links" is that GMO reduces genetic diversity. Do you really need a link for that?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chadash 4y ago
The title of this post says "conclusively invalidated by data" and I'm not sure anything is conclusive when it comes to organic food. The evidence that the Moderna vaccine lowers the risk of death due to COVID is conclusive in the sense that a controlled, double blind study was performed and we have determined with some degree of certainty (>99.9%) that the vaccine is effective. But it's relatively easy to design an experiment. How would you even go about designing an experiment for organic food. Giving a vaccine is binary... it was given on two occasions or it wasn't. With organic food, if there are benefits to it, they are most likely over a much longer term. So you'd need to police a participant's eating habits for years or maybe even decades to test your hypothesis. It's not a practical experiment to perform. At best we can say "there's no scientific evidence that organic food is better for you than non-organic", but that's not the same as saying "we have concluded with 99.9% certainty that organic food is no better for you than non-organic food". Certain things just can't be tested effectively, especially things as complicated as diet. This is why dietary recommendations change so frequently. Still, not everything requires conclusive science. There's never been a controlled experiment showing that parachutes save skydivers' lives. But sometimes common sense trumps the need for scientific inquiry. EDIT: Please don't read this as anti-science. On the contrary, science is great for answering certain questions, but has limitations for other questions.
andyjohnson0 4y ago
> GMO is harmful On the basis of the article that you linked to, I think it would be more accurate to say that "currently available GMO food is not thought to be harmful to humans." There is nothing inherent in genetic modification that prevents if from being used to create food that is harmful when consumed by people (or animals) - whether due to toxicity or negative dietary effects. There probably isn't much incentive to do the former (except maybe as a weapon of war or terrorism), but engineering unhealthy but addictive foods isn't hard to imagine. Similarly, theres nothing in the technology that prevents it from being used to develop plants or animals that cause harm to their environment - for example by runaway reproduction, excessive use of resources like water, affecting species equilibria, etc. I personally wouldn't be worried about eating a GMO foodstuff, but I'm extremely unhappy about the environmental impact of ideas like terminator seeds or engineered pesticide resistance that leads to over-use of pesticides, and I wouldn't call them "safe".
- fsflover 4y ago
  > On the basis of the article that you linked to, I think it would be more accurate to say that "currently available GMO food is not thought to be harmful to humans." I would actually say instead that "there is no reason to think that genetic modification itself introduces any additional danger to the food". Of course you can create dangerous food using GMO. You can also just poison it, too.
phkahler 4y ago
Also on the flip side - the notion the GMO are all the same risk. This should be obviously untrue.

mistermann 4y ago

The inverse is far easier, and I'd say even more interesting: common beliefs that are not conclusively supported by data.

NateEag 4y ago
Beliefs that are invalidated by data are guaranteed to be wrong. Beliefs not conclusively supported by data may be wrong. Some such beliefs turn out to be essential to human functioning, like "My life is not just an extended dream or hallucination," "I have the ability to choose what I do," and "It is wrong to murder other people for their possessions." I'd say the former is more interesting than the latter.
- mistermann 4y ago
  Oh there are plenty of interesting and innocuous ones in either category... Perhaps the most important part is almost no one cares what is true on certain classes of questions.
  - NateEag 4y ago
    > Perhaps the most important part is almost no one cares what is true on certain classes of questions. My experience has been slightly different, which is that almost no one is willing to accept that they could be wrong about certain classes of questions. This has similar effects to no one caring what is actually true, but it is not quite the same thing.
    - mistermann 4y ago
      As I see it this is a specialized version of what I'm talking about, no? I completely agree that that is one of the most harmful manifestations though.
      - NateEag 4y ago
        I don't see it that way. To me, not caring what is true is exactly that - not caring. Your actions might be rooted in truth or not, but you don't care. You get your dopamine hits and who gives a shit how they came to happen? Being certain that you're right is quite different. There, you care very intensely about what's true, but you're so confident in your knowledge of what's true that you can't even conceive of being wrong. Both of them lead to pretty terrible behaviors, but the underlying reasons for those behaviors are quite different, IMO.

blakesterz 4y ago

The "Wrecked by success" thing was just here yesterday, I think that fits your question? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31817677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31817677

mrob 4y ago

Searing meat seals in the juices. Wikipedia's only citation for this being false is a commercially published book[0], but there are various reports of experimental testing, e.g.: https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-prime-rib-beef-recipe https://www.seriouseats.com/perfect-prime-rib-beef-recipe https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5699-searing-steak https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_tos/5699-searing-steak [0] McGee, Harold (1990), The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science and Lore, page 13, "The Searing Truth"

froggertoaster 4y ago
Kenji Lopez-Alt's amazing book, The Food Lab, mentions this and so much more.

zeroonetwothree 4y ago

People choose to do things to maximize happiness https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/happiness-satisfaction-work-life-balance-leisure-activities.html https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/happiness-satisfaction-...

mikkergp 4y ago
Not to be pendantic but I guess since we are talking about science and data, that article suggests to me that people do intend to do things to maximize happiness, but that they’re not very good at it, not that they originally seek out to not maximize happiness. There are some in things in there that could imply it but it doesn’t seem to go there.
- CWuestefeld 4y ago
  I think the difficulty is that we all have many desires that are in equilibrium. We might say that we want to quit smoking, or lose weight, or whatever, but in practice that desire has to overcome other desires, and particularly the individual's time preference, to come to a new equilibrium. The fact that the new equilibrium doesn't shut out all other desires in favor of a single focus shouldn't be surprising at all.

jackmott42 4y ago

In America: "Don't swim for 30 minutes after eating or you will cramp" "You should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day" In Korea: "Sleeping with a fan on is dangerous as it will steal your breath"

floor_ 4y ago
Blood flows to your digestive system after eating to help process the food taking it away from you legs and arms.
juancampa 4y ago
The Diving Reflex could explain the first one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diving_reflex
yakubin 4y ago
> "Don't swim for 30 minutes after eating or you will cramp" That's a new one for me, but I'm from Europe. I spent my childhood on rivers and lakes, rapidly alternating between food and swimming (and other things). No cramps due to food (scarcely any at all to be honest). I've had a lot more cramps in swimming pools than in natural water, now that I think about it. > "You should be drinking 8 glasses of water a day" I could believe that. I used to drink ~4 glasses a day, but it made me feel like a lizard (without really realizing the cause at the time). Now I drink more than 8 and feel much better.
- Adrig 4y ago
  I'm from Europe too, and growing up I was told to not swim for 3 hours after lunch or I could literally die...
  - yakubin 4y ago
    There also exist guidelines that you should eat something every 3 hours at least. Conclusion: you mustn't swim. :)
mikkergp 4y ago

bkraz 4y ago

"The world is getting worse" is a belief perpetuated by the media and repeated by many people to explain their own unhappiness. However, many important indicators show things are getting better globally https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health...

fallingfrog 4y ago
These are mostly international statistics, and a lot of the progress being made is first China and now Africa and India catching up with the west. And that's great. In the United States, however, things have been going somewhat backwards since the mid 70's. The millennial generation is poorer than their parents were at the same age. Civil rights are beginning to get rolled back. The political situation is fraught. There are also, as others have pointed out, a number of red flashing danger signs coming from the environment. The earth is limited, and we're treating it as if it's infinite. So, from my point of view, here, the "world is getting worse" belief has some justification.
mpfundstein 4y ago
better for the people. for wildlife and nature its a different story though...
- bkraz 4y ago
  Not necessarily disagreeing, but do you have some metrics to show the scale and speed of the problem?
  - vehemenz 4y ago
    You're shifting the burden to the parent asking for metrics for something that is common knowledge amongst middle schoolers.
    - bkraz 4y ago
      There are many metrics. I was mainly interested to know which ones would be selected. The whole thread is about using data instead of widely held beliefs...

web007 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions should get you started.

larrydag 4y ago

The Flaw of Averages states that: Plans based on the assumption that average conditions will occur are wrong on average. https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/flawaverages1025.html https://news.stanford.edu/pr/00/flawaverages1025.html

gigatexal 4y ago

Covid vaccine hesitancy is a good example.

Ancapistani 4y ago
That's a strong position on a complex topic. There are plenty of reasons why some individuals might choose not to take a given vaccine. Some are rational, many are not.
- gigatexal 4y ago
  Valid reasons to avoid COVID vaccines? Some were better than others but in general to get vaccinated is a no brainer.

randcraw 4y ago

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." After being hit by a truck, surviving cancer, returning from a long war, or losing a child, experience (data) teaches you otherwise.

caeril 4y ago
Hormesis is definitely "a thing". Getting hit by a truck may injure you to the point of being permanently weakened, but a series of lesser traumas will generally improve your bone and connective tissue strength. The phrase is technically incorrect, but the spirit of it absolutely is.
capableweb 4y ago
I'm not sure you could "prove" either way on this with any amount of data. My personal anecdote is that hard times made easier times more fulfilling, and early hardship in my life has made later hardship much easier to deal with, in comparison to my peers. But there is also a limit to that of course. Not sure how I'd handle losing a child for example, or if I'd ever be able to overcome something like that.

nineplay 4y ago

'conclusively proven' is a high bar, particularly when paired with 'commonly'. If it has been conclusively proven false then why is it still commonly believed? It's pretty easy to say 'because I'm smarter than everyone else' but it's also a cop-out. Can it be proven for every single person or living entity? Can it be proven for every location? Can it be proven for every time, every season, every year. You can show the minuscule odds that someone will win the lottery yet people do win lotteries. What can you prove?

flappyeagle 4y ago
I imagine that for a while it was conclusively proven that heavier objects do not fall faster than lighter ones but it was still commonly believed. Maybe it is still widely believed today.

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granto 4y ago

Astrology/horoscopes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology_and_science

uniqueuid 4y ago

Hey, apparently the hot hand debate has been settled and there's actually solid evidence after all this time! [1] [2] [1] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=hot+hand&submit=Search https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/?s=hot+hand&submit=Se... [2] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/07/09/hey-guess-what-there-really-is-a-hot-hand/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2015/07/09/hey-guess-...

Spartan112 4y ago

[flagged]

dang 4y ago
We've banned this account for using HN primarily (exclusively, in fact?) for political and ideological battle. That's not allowed on HN, regardless of which ideology or politics you favor. It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so please don't create accounts to do this with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fennecfoxen 4y ago
> 1 Let’s see. It’s the 1980s, and our economy has been beset by 8-12% annual inflation, amidst general stagnation. Is there anything we could do in this situation to increase economic output, and thus the supply of goods and services, and maybe even increase employment at the same time? Might any of those, perhaps, be promoted through the investment of capital, in any manner at all? No!!! Like Nixon and Ford and Carter before us, we shall maintain very high taxes on the returns from capital investment, as we try subsidizing demand once again with stimulus spending! It’s sure to work this time.
- Ensorceled 4y ago
  How does failed economic policies show that "Trickle down economics" works? We've had a long period of stagnate wages results in a real reduction in buying power for a large portion of the population, objectively the "trickle down" part is not working.
_gabe_ 4y ago
> Vaccines causing long-term damages more than Covid while Covid causes long-covid with long term damages 1 in 10 times and vaccines cause long-term damages 1 in 100,000 times. Do you know what long term is? We literally don't have enough data to determine which way this will go. According to the NIH they're collecting long term data that will end after 3 years of study[0]. I'm old enough to remember that COVID-19 started around November of 2019. The current date is June of 2022, if my math hasn't failed me, we still haven't hit 3 years of having COVID. Further, the vaccine came out in December of 2020. It's stupid to try and say that the vaccine is perfectly safe long term, the same way it's stupid to say it's dangerous long term. We literally just do not know. And from that study you listed on trans folks regretting transition: > Thirty-nine percent (39%) of respondents experienced serious psychological distress in the month before completing the survey (based on the Kessler 6 Psychological Distress Scale), compared with only 5% of the U.S. population. > Forty percent (40%) have attempted suicide in their lifetime, nearly nine times the rate in the U.S. population (4.6%). > Seven percent (7%) attempted suicide in the past year—nearly twelve times the rate in the U.S. population (0.6%). So apparently trans folks are only 9-12x more likely to attempt to commit suicide, but we're still being told that there's absolutely no harmful physiological effects. After all they don't regret it. [0]: https://www.niaid.nih.gov/clinical-trials/covid-19-recon-19-study https://www.niaid.nih.gov/clinical-trials/covid-19-recon-19-...

ttpphd 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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andyjohnson0 4y ago

Homeopathy.

muh_gradle 4y ago

A very recent one for me is that a lack of electrolytes is not a likely cause for cramps. The current science is still up in the air and the conclusion at the moment is "we still don't really know" https://www.painscience.com/articles/cramps-spasms-twitches-tremors.php https://www.painscience.com/articles/cramps-spasms-twitches-...

haunter 4y ago

"The human eye can't see past 30fps" Well with the advance of video gaming and high refresh rate displays that went out of the window quickly. Nowadays you even have 120hz displays on smartphones so easy to show someone the plain difference between 30fps and 120fps. At home I have a 240hz monitor and even the difference between 144fps and 240fps is noticeable albeit not that big difference as between 30fps and higher ones.

vehemenz 4y ago
Agree with your point, but high-refresh displays are nothing new. We were debunking this claim 20+ years ago. I gamed with a CRT that did 640x480 @ 300hz back in the 90s.

getthisgone 4y ago

CM30 4y ago

Vaccines causing autism seems like a good example. The original studies about this were fraudulent/wrong, and their effects have basically never been replicated since. Also that of people only using 10% of their brain, since it's more accurate that people use different parts of their brains at different times. No, using 100% wouldn't give you psychic powers or make you superhuman or whatever else some works of fiction and new age mystics might posit.

drcongo 4y ago

Omnipotent beings.

DougN7 4y ago
Lack of evidence isn’t the same as conclusive proof.
- drcongo 4y ago
  It's logically impossible, which is proof. The being would be unable to create an immovable object, because if they're omnipotent they would be able to move the object, if they can't move the object then they are not omnipotent.
  - DougN7 4y ago
    Ok, sure, the paradox can’t be solved. But most of the time ‘omnipotent being’ would refer to a deity of some sort, and this only rules out an absolute deity of a very specific and narrow definition. I don’t think it applies to any of the deities I’ve come across in literature, religion or movies. I think the paradox itself is the problem.
    - drcongo 4y ago
      You're changing the rules. The thread asked "What are examples of common beliefs conclusively invalidated by data?", I replied "Omnipotent beings", now you're bringing in "deities" that you specifically have come across in "literature, religion or movies". Now, given that I don't know you, and nor presumably does the person who asked the original question, how are we to know which movies, religions and literature you have been exposed to in order to ascertain whether the deities that you specifically know about would be covered by my answer? Obviously we can't. So given that, maybe it broadens out to just "deities", but of course, not all deities are supposed to be omnipotent. Which is exactly why I didn't say "deities". So in summary, I was right and you've constructed a very bizarre new argument to try to justify your original, very wrong, nitpick.

clircle 4y ago

Increased spending on health care results in average increased health outcomes (e.g. lower all-cause mortality).