Talk:List of misconceptions

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 2006-10-18. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Contents

[edit] pre-deletion discussion

You said you moved bigfoot to a disputed facts section. This section is not at disputed facts, it's not in this article, and it's not in controversy. So I guess I'm asking where is it?
~ender 2003-09-20 07:20:MST

Should a person or group religious view point be called a misconception ? Smith03 17:09, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes. --Wik 17:35, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)

Whether the "world was created in seven days" by God is an unfalsifiable hypothesis and a matter of faith. -- Smerdis of Tlön 01:07, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The creationism v evolutionism argument over how the world was created is POV stuff Graham :) 16:49, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Creationism is as good a misconception as any. This is not "POV stuff". --Wik 18:09, Sep 20, 2003 (UTC)
I would have to agree with Grahama and ask Wik why he believes it to be NPOV. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:22, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussion

This page was listed on VfD on September 20.

Wikipedians in favour of deletion:

Wikipedians in favour of keeping:

Wikipedians whose position is not obvious:

[edit] Deletion discourse

Deletionist: All the items in the list are POV - you can't write neutrally on this topic. Furthermore, they're not misconceptions: they're semantic disputes or disputed facts.

Inclusionist: But I can think of NPOV misconceptions, like the Mary Celeste or "play it again Sam". People will accept that they've got a misconception on being confronted with the full details.

Deletionist: Even if there are NPOV misconceptions, the article will invariably attract POV additions: it'd be a lot of work to make this thing neutral, and keep it that way.

Inclusionist: Perhaps, but I think it'd be worth the effort. This would make a fun entry point into a range of articles, and be educational to boot.

Deletionist: In the end, it just isn't encyclopedic now, and it won't ever be encyclopedic. Let's delete it and move on.

Inclusionist: I disagree: like a butterfly, this article will turn into something beautiful. Just wait and see.

Deletionist: Nearly every article in an encyclopedia has information that someone didn't know, or was incorrect about. These pieces of trivia belong in the articles about that subject, which is where encylopedia users will look for answers to their question. If they want to learn a random fact, they can click on Random Page.

Inclusionist: It's not stated, but this entry is about "common and widespread" misconceptions, not just all possible misconceptions. Students tend to always aquire the same misconceptions. "Education by debunking" is a valid technique, especially in gradeschool physics, and this entry brings it all together in one place.

[edit] Proposed move

If my rewrite of the article sticks (ha!) then I'd like to move this thing to list of misconceptions. Objections? Martin 00:33, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

No. But surrealism being an artistic movement is definitely simply a misconception, not a disputed fact. Nearly every primary source from surrealism's beginning to the present day makes this point directly, even in so many words, or indirectly, through its discussion of something completely separate from art, from its definition of surrealism, from its failure to say anything about art... This is not an honest dispute, this is not a controversy, this is a misconception plain and simple. --Daniel C. Boyer 17:24, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I disagree- I dispute it. Kurt Schwitters was a surrealist writer and visual artist. Markalexander100 02:35, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Physics

Some comments by Neo:

  • Gravity is actually the weakest of the four fundamental forces, at about 1 thousand trillion trillion trillion times weaker than the strong nuclear force.
    • Isn't this statement meaningless without defining both the objects, and the distance involved. At the largest scales (for instance of the order of parsecs and above) one can largely reject electromagnetic interactions, whereas one would be stupid to reject gravitational interactions. Similaly one can reject gravitational interactions at length scales of the order of nanometers, but one needs to consider electromagnetic interactions.
    • Is this even a misconception? If people know of the existence of the four fundamental forces, which is quite a high level physics concept (ask people on the street whethere they know what the strong nuclear force is...) then they know that for fundamental particles and small length scales the order of strengths differs from that at macroscopic length scales and for larger objects.
The interactions consider the strength of all charges yester they are added to near-neutrality, for a givven mass and distance. Besides, you can still see stars from thousands, and galaxies from millions, of parsecs away—can you feel their gravity?? -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Some comments by Dotchan:

  • I'm fairly sure that water is colorless; it looks blue because the microparticles in the water absorbs all other colors. (Note that the blue color doesn't become visible until one has waded out to a certain depth.)
Wrong! You've aquired a widespread misconception. Water is [definitely a blue substance], and the "microparticles" which cause the color are the water molecules.--Wjbeaty 20:06, 22 December 2005 (UTC)
No, you're wrong. Water is hueles but not huefree. -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
What does (pure) water taste like? - Matthew238 05:30, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
like your tongue -lysdexia 00:52, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Some comments by tcsetattr:


Some comments by fafnir: 12:19, 10 October 2006 The magnetic pole stuff is meaningless. You can take any magnet, and lable the pole 'north and south' arbitrarily. The north pole is the north magnetic pole, little magnets people carry around and call compasses have the south magnetic pole on the compass painted red and labled 'north' so people know which direction is north. The only misconception is on the author's part. Though the poles have switched in the past, throughout man's history they have remained constant enough for countless people to use them for navigation and such.

  • Meaningless? Which part? I suspect that instead you just don't understand it. "North" and "south" are defined in physics and engineering, just as "positive" and "negative" electric charges are defined. The choice of course was arbitrary, but it was made long ago and is followed by the entire science community. In the same way, you can label electrons as "positive" if you really want, but you'd be sowing confusion by violating a century-old standard. Magnetism is the same: a century-old physics standard tells us what "north" pole means. Maxwell's equations are based on negative electrons, and on "N" poles which point to the Earth's northern hemisphere. According to this standard, the geographic north part of the Earth contains a "south" type of magnetic pole, and so the end of a magnet which points towards it must be a "north" pole. Any authors which say the opposite are wrong: wrong in the same way as if they had said that protons carry a negative charge. --Wjbeaty 08:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Health

In this article, it is told that cold weather can decrease the strenght of the immune system and thus facilitate the common cold. But in the "Old wives' tale" article, the opposite is told: cold weather and decreased immunity have no correlation. At least one of them is wrong.

[edit] Quotations to misquotes

Shouldn't the misquotes from the "Entertainment" section be moved to the article List of famous misquotations? --153.1.150.24 10:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be tempted to leave the Casablanca (apologies about my spelling) fact in there as it is so famous as a misconception, and add a link to the misquotations page for the others, removing the others. --Neo 16:49, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why the sky is blue

Some believe that the sky looks blue because it reflects the ocean...

Who are those fools?! This is a list about "common misconceptions", not "misconceptions held by a tiny minority of people who probably think the moon is made of cheese as well".

I hope there aren't people who believe the sky over a desert is yellow, because it reflects the sand. Psychonaut3000 03:10, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delete this indiscriminate list?

This appears to be an indiscriminate list, I strongly urge deleting the entire ugly mess. However, it seems I just missed the deletion debate by a few days... Can we get some honorable, capable editor to merge the content back into the articles where this stuff belongs, and after this article has been whittled down, delete this thing for good? linas 15:12, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it is a good idea at this time. An AFD was closed the day before you made that comment. --70.48.174.110 00:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
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