Sometimes, you hear someone repeat a fact that's so obviously not true that you think to yourself, "People still believe that?"
1. "Undercover police have to tell you they are policemen when you ask them."
—u/Postraqw
2. "That NASA paid millions for a pen that would write in space."
3. "Daddy long legs are actually the most poisonous spiders in the world, but they don't have long enough fangs to bite you."
—u/Tooke1947
4. "Catherine the Great died after attempting to have sex with a horse."
—u/Cohneswq
5. "That you can reduce fat from a particular body part."
—u/Simsexh
6. "That Marylin Manson removed two of his ribs to blow himself."
7. "Average humans only use 10% of their brain power."
—u/knifetrader
8. "Gum takes seven years to digest."
—u/Hadleigh_ED
9. "If you cut taxes to the wealthy, those savings will trickle down to the lowly workers and make them better off financially."
10. "That being cold will give you a cold."
—u/OSeady
11. "That polygraphs, aka lie detectors, are accurate. Actual scientific assessments of the accuracy of polygraphs consistently show little to no evidence that they are accurate, despite their prevalence in use by law enforcement agencies for investigations and for security clearances. It can result in a lot of false positives of people being nervous about questioning, as well as their physical stress being picked up as a lie by the person 'analyzing' the output. (I’m using air quotes here since it’s one of those things where the analysis is more subjective than objective, so it's prone to human bias.)"
—u/bodyknock
12. "Urine neutralizes jelly fish stings."
—u/posoeraviJX
13. "That making more money means that you’ll be taxed more on the money you already made. Go to any low-income earner and ask them if they’d want to go into the next tax bracket by $1 and they’d say no very frequently."
14. "I was adamantly told by some seniors at work not to drink the water that boiled twice because it cooks the oxygen out of it."
—u/reajols
15. "That a drink concoction can detox your body."
16. "The myth that nuclear power isn't safe."
17. "People thought the world was flat before discovering the new world. That idea came out in the mid 1800s to try and discredit the church."
—u/moon465
18. "Vaccines cause autism."
19. "The idea that you should drink at least eight glasses of water a day to stay hydrated. I mean, come on, it's just not backed by science. Drink enough to be hydrated, but eight glasses is not magic."
And finally...
20. "We're not a company, we're a family."
—u/wilfsland
Got your own? See you in the comments!
Note: These entries have been edited for length and clarity.