Talk:List of popular misconceptions about science

message: I removed this from the list of major myths-
* That Sigmund Freud discovered the unconscious, when many philosophers preceding Sigmund Freud, such as Leibniz, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, in the West, as well a the Vedic and Sufi Traditions predating Freud by millennia, had similar concepts. This myth has been used to allocate modern psychology a special place in understanding human action marking its beginning with Freud or Wilhelm Wundt, and dismiss 'pre-modern' or non-Western psychological models as mythology.
I think it is a misconception among a small number of people, and not a myth, to say that Freud discovered the unconscious, and I do not think that there has ever been any significant group of thoughtful people anywhere who have propagated this idea.  Can anyone cite anything to demonstrate otherwise? Bluerasberry (talk) 18:24, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: removal of point about myth of Freud

message: The lack of elaboration for the "myths" makes them look fairly ridiculous. For example:
*The evolution of the Peppered moth during the Industrial Revolution.
::This refers, I assume, to notion that the moth mutated, rather than just an increase in phenotype selection or something like that. This should be elaborated and not just written off as a "myth," if it is to be included at all. Or link to an article which talks about its "mythical" qualities. As far as I know, and as far as Peppered moth evolution says, it is not a wholly "mythical" phenomena, though I am aware a few Creationists have tried to label it as such.
*Gregor Mendel's experiments with pea plants.
::This refers, I assume, to the fact that a historian has challenged whether Mendel's results involved some data smoothing. I'm not sure that anybody thinks he didn't experiment with pea plants at all, which is what is implied by labeling this a "myth."
And so on with a few of the other examples. A better explanation of Kuhn's take on this might be warranted: that these simplistic, whiggish views of scientific progress with their great men, great experiments, great reason, etc., is a pedagogical tool used to teach science more than an attempt at any deliberate deception or perversion of history. Scientists see themselves as steps in a trek towards truth, which causes them to depict history that way, even if history is more complicated than that, so says Kuhn. --Fastfission 20:10, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Problems

message: I wondered how long it would be before the 'ritual' section fell out, and frankly I'm surprised that it lingered this long. I wrote it, but I admit that a) it's not quality material and b) that it does not fit an encyclopedia. So I'll let it go without a fight.
The theme however still fascinates me, so be sure to expect something along similar lines in the future! Chris 11:25, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's just not encyclopedic content as it was, that's all. It was more of a personal speculative essay -- which have their place, of course, elsewhere in the world. ;) --Fastfission 15:34, 26 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Goodbye to 'Science as a ritualistic practice' section 

message: To me the section on copernicus reads more like discussion than content.  Here's what we say,
:Copernicus, his theory, and his reasons for withholding publication. According to Arthur Koestler, Copernicus did not propose a true heliocentric theory; he added a system of cycles and subcycles that made his system even more complicated than the Ptolemaic system, and he withheld publication out of fears of being ridiculed by other scholars, not out of fears of persecution. (However simply looking at pages from the original manuscript would seem to eliminate the first part of this claim. [1] (http://www.bj.uj.edu.pl/bjmanus/revol/qprev_e.html) Likewise, "more complicated" refers to the greater number of epicycles, with whcich Copernicus replaced equant circles, achieving what was considered a simplification.).
I think we could improve what is said with the help of a little research. To what extent did copernicus use epicycles; were there more or fewer epicycles than in Ptolemaic system?  Epicycles and other corrective mechanisms were added to the Ptolemaic system over time, so I would expect it to be more complex, if only because it is older, but we should find out for sure.  What were the reasons for Copernicus withholding publication?  Quite honestly, the link we are asked to follow didn't help me decide. Perhaps someone could tell us what we are supposed to see there. Was the Copernican system more or less accurate than the Ptolemaic? My understanding is that there was no great difference. Again we should find out for sure. --Chris 08:51, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copernicus 

message: What is the source for Kekule's dream being mythical? Septentrionalis 01:36, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: See benzene and Kekulés Traum (Kekulés dream, in German). Cacycle 23:09, 30 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think that claim can be justified. Kekule himself wrote that it came to him in a daydream (he was on a bus at the time, FWIW). He died in 1896. 24 years later, his biographer came to the conclusion that other researchers had been in the right area with their theories and so Kekule must have got it from them. I am interested to know how Kekule's primary autobiographical record is over-ruled by the later conclusions of a biographer. This seems arbitrary (to put it mildly) and looks rather like a NPOV problem. I propose the removal of Kekule from the myths page. Garrick92 17:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Kekule's snakes

message: :Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
I oppose this effort to constrain WP to one narrow meaning of "mythology" before; I strongly oppose it now. Septentrionalis 19:18, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Survey

message: It is often stated that the notion that "Columbus discovered America" is wrong, but I actually don't know why.  Is it because he didn't visit the American land mass, and the islands are considered to not count as part of the Americas?  Or is it because people have decided that the only acceptable definition of "discover" is "to find something before anyone else has"?  If it's the former, that is an acceptable definition, but I think people need to clarify that islands are not to considered part of a continent (i.e., Britons aren't Europeans, Japanese aren't Asians).  If it's the latter, pretty much the same thing goes: people need to clarify that no one can "discover" a restaurant or a social phenomenon or anything that anyone else knew about first.  (This doesn't touch on the flat earth / spherical earth matter.)  Boris B 19:31, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Columbus discovery semantics 

message: Although it was long assumed that Newton's apple was a myth, a contemporary reference to it was found in the diary of one of Newton's friends.  I'd fix it, but I don't remember where it was that I read it. —WikiMarshall (talk) 01:11, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newton's Apple 

message: There are a number of popular myths that depict science and scientists in a bad light, too. How relevant are these to this article? I'm thinking particularly of the Lady Hope story (that Darwin recanted on his deathbed) and the myth that B. F. Skinner kept his daughter locked in a box and that she committed suicide as a result. --FOo (talk) 08:56, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anti-science myths 

message: In light of the sentence "Scientific myths also tend to either overstate or understate the role of chance in scientific discovery," it might be useful to cite Alexander Fleming's discovery of antibiotic penicillin as an example of a scientific myth. The popular tale (one example of many would be John Bankston's "Alexander Fleming and the Story of Penicillin") is that Alexander Fleming serendipitously happened to have an uncleaned culture dish floating around, that just happened to have mold and bacteria growing on it, from a temperature change that just happened to have occurred that day, and that Fleming just happened to notice this and surmised that the mold was producing an antibiotic substance; from which concatenation of chance penicillin was born. 
This is a pretty classic example of overstating both the dramatic lone genius scientist and the factor of luck in scientific discovery. As a matter of fact the antibiotic properties of penicillum mold were already known; even without considering a few obscure research papers of junior scientists using penicillin mold to clear infected saddle sores in horses in Arabia (see Ernest Duchesne), scientists in other departments of the same laboratory as Fleming regularly used it as a chemical substance to clear their gram-negative cultures of unwanted bacteria. Its applications for medicinal use in humans had never been seriously considered due to the simple fact that it was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to produce enough penicillin to be effective in one human being, let alone to be distributed en masse. 
And they were right. It was not until the need became urgent during World War II to prevent epidemic spread of disease in wartime conditions and a research team devoted itself fully to mass production of penicillin (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penicillin#Mass_production team of Howard Florey, Ernst Boris Chain and Norman Heatley among others) that it actually became feasible to use penicillin to treat bacterial infections medicinally. And if one were looking for inspiring stories of science heroes to teach to our children, you'd think their story would be a much better one.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.56.47 (talk) 03:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggested section: Myths about Alexander Fleming 

message: This article is appalling. Where to begin? After weeding out the unreferenced rambling, we are still presented with considerable WP:SYNTH. 
What is a "science myth"? Whose term is this? Does it include historical anecdotes of what certain scientists may have done or said even if this is unrelated to any of their scientific work (Newton discovered the law of gravity regardless of the apple. Galilei defended heliocentrism regardless of the eppur si move, etc. Are these "science myths"? According to whom?
How is an apocryphal saying attributed to a scientist in any way different from an apocryphal saying attributed to an artist or politician? --dab (𒁳) 12:50, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Wondering about AFD here. This also most looks like a kind of fork, "Well if you can have (pick you religion) myth then I can have science myth", now to find stuff to include.Slatersteven (talk) 12:57, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

text: That would workSlatersteven (talk) 13:04, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: salvageable?

message: http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%83%D1%87%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%84 Vyacheslav84 (talk) 09:41, 19 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  translate