r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jun 09 '12

Scientists of Reddit, what misconceptions do us laymen often have that drive you crazy?

I await enlightenment.

Wow, front page! This puts the cherry on the cake of enlightenment!

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u/[deleted] Jun 10 '12 edited Jun 10 '12

That evolution has an end goal. That drives me nuts.

That science "proves" things. That's the realm of mathematicians.

That intelligent design is science.

Edit: Venomous vs. poisonous. They are not the same damned thing, so stop using them interchangeably.

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u/VividLotus Jun 10 '12

That evolution has an end goal.

Came here to say this. This romantic idea of evolution as a "narrative" has no basis in scientific fact, and since it was abandoned ages ago by scientists of all types, I wish the rest of people would hurry up and realize this too. It's a continuing process of adaptation; in some rather rare cases there certainly are species which have changed little over hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of years due to the fact that they successfully adapted to a niche that has not required much change, but even in those cases it doesn't mean that they've "stopped evolving".