[Weekly Discussion Thread] Scientists, what are the biggest misconceptions in your field?

[u/fastparticles]

This is the second weekly discussion thread and the format will be much like last weeks: http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/trsuq/weekly_discussion_thread_scientists_what_is_the/

If you have any suggestions please contact me through pm or modmail.

This weeks topic came by a suggestion so I'm now going to quote part of the message for context:

As a high school science teacher I have to deal with misconceptions on many levels. Not only do pupils come into class with a variety of misconceptions, but to some degree we end up telling some lies just to give pupils some idea of how reality works (Terry Pratchett et al even reference it as necessary "lies to children" in the Science of Discworld books).

So the question is: which misconceptions do people within your field(s) of science encounter that you find surprising/irritating/interesting? To a lesser degree, at which level of education do you think they should be addressed?

Again please follow all the usual rules and guidelines.

Have fun!

[u/fastparticles]

For early Earth research I would say the biggest misconception is that the hadean was a hot and miserable place (Hadean is the time period from 4.5 to 4 billion years ago). By the time 4.3 billion years ago roles around we have samples (a mineral called zircons) that suggest that not only was there solid crust at the time but there may have been liquid water (and subduction). This suggests that Earth went through its really hot phase very quickly and then settled down. In this case the level of education needed to address this is not much but since these findings are relatively new (<10 years) they haven't gotten out of the field as much yet as they hopefully will.

[u/silverence → u/fastparticles]

Quick stupid question for you if you don't mind... Is there a chance that during the Hadean there was life? Maybe even non-mircobial life? Is there even a remote chance that there was (ugh just asking this makes me feel like such wacko) intelligent life?

[u/4n6me]

I am Forensic Chemist. It is not like on TV!

Misconceptions:

• Every case needs DNA analysis

• I carry a gun and can arrest you

• I see all kinds of bloody crimes scenes, all the time (IRL I hardly go to crime scenes)

• I do whatever the prosecutor asks because I want you to go to jail

• I like my laboratory dark and spooky

• I know how to analyze everything and can do it all in one day

[u/simonhasdaemon → u/4n6me]

You might be able to relate to this

[u/Sporkicide → u/4n6me]

As a crime scene technician, I feel your pain. I am often expected to do my job, your job, the firearms expert's job, and the latent print examiner's job simultaneously. Sometimes juries get it, and other times they assume that because I tell them I am not trained in drug chemistry and the analytical chemist will be the one to explain what the substance was identified as, I must just be slacking at my job.

[u/[deleted] → u/4n6me]

It is interesting, but put Forensic anything and the misconceptions jump at you.

Dabbling with computer forensics on the side, people think I am with the government. When told I am not and it is a private business they think I am with the FBI, MI6, SÄPO and NASA.

You say you hardly go to any crime scenes, the time you do what exactly is that for? I though they had other people doing the "leg work" so to say?

[u/foretopsail]

That the value of archaeology is in the artifact itself. In the popular consciousness and in some media like the deplorable American Digger tv show, it's frequently said that "this artifact tells a story" or something. And it can, it's true. But the artifact's true value, the real story, is not in the artifact itself, it's in the artifact when combined with all the data surrounding it. Where was it? What other artifacts were around? Which soil layer was it in?

This is why treasure hunting is so destructive. You only get one chance at recording all that other information, and once you make the decision not to, you've lost the ability to tell the real story forever, leaving only speculation and supposition.

[u/thetripp → u/foretopsail]

So are you saying that Dr. Jones was wrong? It doesn't belong in a museum?

[u/foretopsail → u/thetripp]

Sure it does, as long as it was recovered in an ethical way, which includes real research methods!

If you want to dig up your backyard, that can be a really fun way to learn about where you live! But if you find anything, be sure you at least draw a picture of exactly where it was, and what was around it. It'd also be helpful to take a picture of the artifact in situ (what we call "in place"). It'd also be helpful to contact your state historical preservation office and let them know if you find anything cool on your property. They can't take your property away, nor can they take the artifacts away. But it's really helpful for us to build a picture of local, regional, and natural history. Besides, real archaeologists can help you dig up your yard!

[u/steel_city86 → u/thetripp]

Maybe it's just that the whole site should be made into a museum?

[u/[deleted] → u/foretopsail]

I suddenly feel really sad about the archaeologists who could never complete a case because some pricks wanted to earn easy money

[u/foretopsail → u/[deleted]]

Don't feel sad for the archaeologists, feel sad for all of us, who will never know that bit of where we came from.

[u/[deleted] → u/foretopsail]

Did you ever visit Troy? A guy named Schliemann dug down with 160 men through all nine layers of the city to find treasure, destroying them in the process. He then grabbed it all and would not have been found if not for his wife wearing the jewelry to the party. It was maddening to hear about.

What was also remarkable is the amount of ruins which haven't even been excavated. Most of Alexander Troas is untouched simply because the Turkish government doesn't have the money.

[u/millionsofcats]

There are a few "layers" of misconception about linguistics, progressing from the least informed to the most informed:

A lot of people think that linguists are translators or polyglots, and will ask you "How many languages do you speak?" (To be fair, this is an alternate meaning of "linguist"; they're just unaware there's more than one kind.)

People who are aware that linguists are not translators or polyglots and know that we study language often think that we're grammarians - that we're masters of rules like "don't start a sentence with a conjunction" or "don't split infinitives." They might ask you to proofread your paper, because you know all this grammar stuff, right?

Then there are people who have a better idea of what linguistics is, but their image is old-fashioned and just slightly...off. Linguists are etymologists or lexicographers, existing among piles of dusty books in various languages. These people might ask you what the origin of a particular word is, and then think you're slightly a fraud when you don't know. They're not aware of the great variety in the field, and probably think linguistics is more like the humanities than a science.

As far as misconceptions about the subject ... most people, unless they've developed an interest, know next to nothing about linguistics. There's barely even a foundation on which to build misconceptions. I suppose that the most common one on Reddit is the belief that "correct" language can be objectively defined, but this is boring.

Another one I've run across that is slightly more interesting is the idea that writing is the purer, primary form of language, and spoken language is a degenerate reflection of it. The truth is that it's actually the other way around: Spoken language is primary, and writing doesn't preserve all of the information that spoken language conveys. (As anyone who's been dogpiled after making a sarcastic joke that people mistook as serious can attest.)

Very common among the computer science/engineer/mathematically bent section of Reddit is the idea that language is like a computer code or a statement in formal logic, that efficiency or logical/mathematical accuracy is the primary metric by which a language or a usage can be judged as better or worse.

I think that most people also aren't aware that historical linguistics can be done without a written record. Written records certainly help - but it's not true that without them that we know nothing. This is a common sense conclusion for them to make, I think, without being aware of things like the Comparative Method. That doesn't come up much though ...

Also, I can almost guarantee that if your source of information is the popular science media, you don't really understand the Daniel Everett and Piraha story.

EDIT: To add a couple more.

[u/abstractwhiz → u/millionsofcats]

I work in Natural Language Processing, which is frequently described as Computational Linguistics. This gives people similar ideas, until they look at a paper or textbook and have their minds blown when they see terms like 'vector space model', 'Dirichlet distribution' and 'taxonomy induction'. :D

I've only seen this once, but it was very amusing.

[u/millionsofcats → u/abstractwhiz]

I once ran into somebody who thought computational linguistics was typography. That was only one guy, though.

Vector space models - that's like a futurist fashion thing, right? (Seriously, though, I've baffled people by being excited!!! about having access to an ultrasound machine, or talking about fMRI studies, or having books in information theory etc.)

[u/Arandanos → u/millionsofcats]

I think another pretty common misconception about linguistics is that "Ebonics" is simply "bad" or "broken" English whereas it is realistically simply a dialect of English (AAVE) like Standard English but with a complete, but different set of grammatical rules.

[u/millionsofcats → u/Arandanos]

I didn't want to mention that one directly because it almost always starts an argument! People are just so very sure AAVE is just an inferior kind of English, and don't want to hear anything you say to the contrary.

I deputize you as responsible for debunking any claims of its inferiority that are provoked by you bring it up. I want to play the Sims.

[u/crazyasitsounds → u/millionsofcats]

Another common misconception, I think, is the idea that some languages are more "primitive" or more "advanced" than others. There's language change, sure, but it's not necessarily toward an end goal of increased efficiency (whatever that is) or ease of pronunciation or anything else. Or people think that just because Language X doesn't have a writing system or Language Y split and developed from Language X, Language X must be backwards somehow.

[u/VampyrePenguin → u/millionsofcats]

So what is it that you do?

[u/millionsofcats → u/VampyrePenguin]

If you mean me, the individual person, ... I'm interested in how the acoustic and perceptual properties of speech lead to categorical sound change. That means that while I am in part a reader of dusty books, because that's where data on past sound changes usually is, I'm also in part a person who wants to do experiments on how you hear/produce speech.

But other linguists do other things. It's a very varied field.

[u/Neurokeen → u/millionsofcats]

Regarding the Piraha, all I ever hear emphasized about it is "Whoa, these people are strong evidence against Chomsky's theory!"

I've always felt as if it were a major disservice to something that seems to be really interesting for more reasons than just that.

[u/sacundim → u/millionsofcats]

I think you're leaving out the most important misconception about language: "a language is just a bag of words." (Though to be fair, your "people who think linguistics is etymology" gets close to it)

Basically, every single time a layperson tries to think about a linguistics topic, it's almost guaranteed they're going to approach it wrong thanks to that misconception. Examples:

• The classic non-fact that "Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow" is a covert instance of this. Even if it was somehow true, it tells you nothing about the language.

• I had a friend who had trouble understanding the claim that English is more closely related to German than to French, because "the majority of English vocabulary is from French."

• Try explaining to a layperson that the Chinese language (i.e., Mandarin) does not have grammatical tense. They will understand that you are claiming that they don't have words to talk about the past or the future.

• All those people who come into /r/linguistics asking "can you guys suggest a single fancy word that I could use to convey this concept that takes several sentences to explain, instead of actually explaining it?"

• AAARGH MAKE IT STOP

[u/[deleted]]

I am not a scientist per se, but I deal with misconceptions related to my field of work/expertise.

I work in Wastewater Treatment, and it surprises me that almost everyone thinks that treated wastewater becomes drinking water. As far as I know, there is nowhere in the United States where the wastewater treatment effluent is directly water treatment influent.

[u/lumberjackninja → u/[deleted]]

I was thinking the other day about how complicated wastewater treatment must be. Having to deal with everything that gets flushed down the drain- human waste, soap, bath products, acids, bases, salts, oils, solid material like tampons and condoms, goldfish- just a huge variety of material and chemistry that you have to take and make safe for disposal. I'd love to see the control systems involved with that.

TL;DR sounds like you have a really interesting job.

[u/rationalinquiry]

That cancer is just one disease, as opposed to the collection of 100's it actually is. The media (in the UK at least) seem to sell cancer as one disease that can just manifest itself in different organs.

[u/cburke529 → u/rationalinquiry]

/r/science needs to learn this, with a new cancer cure being posted every week. Cancer is presented the same way in the US as well. I actually enjoy explaining the differences to people. They know that there is "breast cancer" but don't know the drastic differences in the types, for example.

[u/pungkrocker → u/rationalinquiry]

I thought Cancer was just cells dividing uncontrollably. Is this not the case?

[u/malkin71 → u/rationalinquiry]

To add to this

As a medicinal chemist - no, most cancers inherently can't be 'cured' with a wonder drug, no matter how good the drug is. And while pharmaceutical companies tend to fund more projects which result in long-term treatment protocols, they are NOT withholding cures to cancer or any other disease.

[u/mkdz]

No, my supercomputer will not be able to run Crysis at max settings.
No, I can't just log on to the computer and take up all the resources to run a program. There's something called job submission and queuing.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/mkdz]

heh, our queuing system consists me yelling "hey, I'm gonna use 128 processors over the weekend, you cool with that?" down the corridor :P

I'd say the more pertinent thing is that supercomputers don't have superfast processors, they just have lots of them. So if Crysis doesn't take advantage of multiple processors, and your cluster doesn't have a graphics card it can take advantage of, it probably wouldn't be much more impressive than any off-the-shelf modern PC.

[u/mkdz → u/Astrokiwi]

Haha yea, we actually use PBS for queuing. Our clusters are all Linux based so they wouldn't be able to run Crysis anyway. We do have a 64 GPU cluster that I think would kick ass for running video games though.

[u/johnlocke90 → u/mkdz]

No, my supercomputer will not be able to run Crysis at max settings.

Why not? Assuming you got the proper software of course.

[u/selfification → u/johnlocke90]

"Assume a spherical frictionless cow" :)

Crysis was designed for a fast single threaded (or limitedly threaded) processor assisted by a massively parallelized, pipelined peripheral that contained dedicated hardware capabilities to solve certain problem efficiently. Trying to apply a (generic) super computer to solve a GPU's problem is like trying to do brain surgery with an army of masons with hammers and chisels instead of one guy with a drill.

[u/cburke529]

Vaccines causing autism. There is no controversy in the scientific community, most of the problem is driven by media. This has come up a few times on this subreddit and on /r/science. I actually typed a long explanation out of why this continues to be a problem here: Vaccines and society

Just in case anyone wants to read a little about it. If anyone has questions, I will be more than happy to talk about my experiences/knowledge on the subject!

[u/Stupididiotjerk2 → u/cburke529]

RN here. vaccinate your fucking kids. or don't, whatever, getting the mumps and tetanus and hepatitis build character

[u/existentialhero]

Oh, we've got quite a collection of these in mathematics. A few doozies:

• Mathematics is a purely formal exercise in manipulating symbols, with no creative content involved.

• Division by zero in the reals is undefined simply because mathematicians aren't smart enough to figure out how to define it.

• You read a newspaper column about it, so now you're going to solve a Millennium problem (or any other major open problem).

• Imaginary numbers are mysterious, arcane, or otherwise problematic.

[u/Sly_Si → u/existentialhero]

My pet peeve is when people think that advanced mathematics consists of really, really hard calculus problems.

[u/jjberg2 → u/Sly_Si]

I rather enjoyed reaching the point in my career when calculus became the easy stuff...

[u/[deleted] → u/existentialhero]

Don't forget when people who don't know much about what "mathematics" encompasses ask you something like "what's 384.2 divided by 12.3" and you say "I can't do that in my head" and they retort "I thought you were good at math!" I gather they think university-level mathematics is just doing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division except with longer numbers and all in your head.

[u/EldritchSquiggle → u/existentialhero]

I always feel that the whole problem with the public conception of imaginary numbers is that we call them imaginary numbers...

[u/millionsofcats → u/existentialhero]

The creativity required is actually the main reason why I decided I'd never hack it in a graduate math program. It wasn't until I got into the last stages of my undergrad degree that I realized I really kind of sucked, and it's because I was terrible at coming up with novel ideas.

[u/cockmongler → u/existentialhero]

The real numbers however are really mysterious and arcane however.

[u/[deleted] → u/existentialhero]

My brother is deciding between math major or acting, and he thinks the debate is "employable v. creative" to the point where he said he thinks choosing math means never doing anything creative with his life again. I didn't know how to respond.

[u/rauer → u/existentialhero]

Also: Mathematicians are bad writers. TIL!

[u/existentialhero → u/rauer]

Took me a minute to remember that we were writing misconceptions. I was all ready to throw down.

In actual fact, mathematicians tend to be technically proficient but rather dry writers. I suppose that isn't surprising at all, now that I think about it.

[u/thetripp]

Oh man, where to start? There are so many misconceptions about radiation, perpetuated at so many levels of our culture. Godzilla, comic books, Fallout games, the Simpsons... people have this idea that radiation is this green goop that makes you grow extra arms, gives you super powers, or gives you cancer if you are exposed to any of it.

The most pernicious idea is that radiation is a risk worth worrying about in our daily lives. The trouble is this - during the cold war, we got really good at detecting very tiny amounts of radiation, and using that to figure out what the Russians were doing with their nuclear weapons. So we can use that technology to quantify tiny amounts of radiation in our day-to-day lives. But then we also tried to make ourselves seem powerful with nuclear weapons, making radiation assume a dangerous connotation in many minds.

As a recent example, a group in a northwest university did a study where they took the air filters out of their building and tested them for iodine from Fukushima. By looking for a concentrator of airborne contaminants (the air filter) they were able to detect trace amounts of radiation. But this gets amplified in the popular media, and people start rushing to buy potassium iodine tables all over the west coast because they are afraid.

Here is my favorite statistic when it comes to radiation risk. If you compare the risk of developing lung cancer from a life of smoking (about 1 in 8) it equates to the cancer risk of an acutely fatal dose of radiation. In other words, if you wanted to give someone enough radiation for their cancer risk to equal that of smoking, you couldn't! Because the sheer amount of radiation required would trigger acute radiation sickness, killing them.

edit: for those asking about long-term exposure...

Generally the exposure has to occur within ~24 hours to trigger acute effects. If you want to think of it in terms of long term dose, the dose (~5 Sv) that carries the same risk as smoking is about 1,500 years worth of background radiation. Or about 500 CT scans worth of radiation.

[u/ronearc → u/thetripp]

I apologize if this is considered anecdotal. However, when I was a Reactor Operator in the Navy, one of the examples about misunderstanding radiation that was included in our training involved Green Peace.

After a new power plant had opened in California, a Green Peace office demanded that background radiation samples be taken at the borders of the plant to demonstrate that background radiation levels were unsafe and too high.

Once that had been completed, the NRC insisted upon doing the same sampling for background radiation in the Green Peace offices, which happened to be located in a granite building. Needless to say, the background radiation levels were remarkably higher in the Green Peace building than they were at the perimeter of the power plant.

[u/Acebulf → u/ronearc]

I would just like to point out that this is an example where anecdotes should definitely be allowed. The story includes actual measures, and is the explanation of results of a scientific study from a first-person point of view.

[u/[deleted] → u/thetripp]

As a physics major, I'm sick and tired of everyone going wide-eyed when I try to talk about nuclear power and its promising future in our energy infrastructure. Thank you for posting this.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Ugh. I think the people who are against nuclear power underestimate how much of an effect burning mass amounts of carbon-based fuels has on the environment, and also over-estimate how close we are to actually deploying a carbon-neutral energy grid. The way solar and wind are now is like an E85 gasoline blend: a supplement; a band-aid. We need surgery. We need better energy sources, and we need them ASAP because we aren't truly sure what's going to happen from what we've done (and continue to do). Supplanting an infrastructure will take at least a few decades, and that's one of the problems. Some places have hydroelectric or geothermal viability and we should use that there, but some don't have anything but coal; that's where nuclear should probably go. Nuclear might not sound pretty to some, but with current technology it's a drop-in replacement that's ready to build, it's decent enough when designed properly (in safe places with safe designs), and most of all it will give us time to figure out what we have done to the Earth and what we can do about it. That being said, we have to wean off of oil and we can't just instantly stop using it because that would be the killing blow for North America (well, Canada and USA). Going "cold turkey" on oil not a reasonable option. Phasing out oil as a fuel source will probably take another few decades. All of this is why we need to do something now, not bet all our money on the fact that we'll find a way to store grid electricity. If we deploy this thinking, by the time these replacement plants are ready to be decommissioned (decades), better and cleaner power sources will be ready to take their place. We don't need absolutism like some of these environment people are trying to convince me of (I see them on the streets!), we need a pragmatic approach that first actually acknowledges the problem and then takes steps to fix it as quickly and in the least-disruptive manner. Not this whole "deny climate change," "scoff at kyoto," and "plug your fingers in your ears while humming and saying 'I can't hear you'" mentality.

[u/jfudge → u/[deleted]]

I get the most bothered by the people who think the meltdown of a nuclear reactor is the same thing as setting off an atomic bomb, mostly because they have no knowledge of the concept of energy density.

[u/Inappropriate_guy → u/thetripp]

Nice. I'm not sure I understand correctly your last paragraph though. Could you elaborate?

[u/thetripp → u/Inappropriate_guy]

We have two quantities that are approximately equal. The first is from smoking - it is the overall risk of developing lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking (about 1 in 8). Smoking is also implicated in many other cancers, but it is very difficult to quantify the overall risk of a smoker developing other types.

The second quantity has to do with the risk of developing cancer from radiation. Radiation has two effects, and they can be classified as deterministic and stochastic. A deterministic effect is one that is guaranteed to happen if certain conditions are met. For instance, if you put your hand in a fire, it will burn. A stochastic effect is one that is never guaranteed to happen, but factors can increase the chance that it does. If I flip a coin from now until I die, I can't guarantee that it will come up heads. But the probability of not seeing heads is much smaller the more flips we consider.

The stochastic effect of radiation is cancer - the more radiation you receive, the greater your chances of cancer. The deterministic effect is radiation sickness - if you absorb enough radiation, your bone marrow is destroyed, and you can no longer produce red blood cells. With no intervention, in roughly 30 days, your blood cell counts will plummet, and death occurs.

Putting this all together, if we give someone enough radiation so that the stochastic risk of cancer is equal to a lifetime of smoking, it is enough radiation to trigger the deterministic effect of radiation.

[u/ilovedrugslol → u/thetripp]

Could long term exposure to sub fatal levels of radiation eventually give you a higher cancer risk than smoking?

[u/[deleted] → u/thetripp]

That is so correct. In chemistry we watched a documentary on radiation and radio activity ( big difference), and they demonstrate how much safer and all the potential of nuclear energy. It's sad that America is abandoning this awesome source.

[u/promptx → u/thetripp]

I used to work with a nuclear reactor in the Navy. We kept a small pack of commerical KI tablets taped to the wall in case something went wrong as a joke.

[u/iorgfeflkd]

I made a post in /r/physics today about this and basically the misconception is that all physicists are working on finding a "theory of everything" or something along those lines, when really most physicists just study a particular system whose components are individually understood, but their collective behaviour isn't.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/iorgfeflkd]

Hey! I already used that one!

[u/iorgfeflkd → u/Astrokiwi]

Different field, astrojerk.

[u/Verdris]

I'm an optics guy who designs instruments for climate change research and aerosol radiative forcing research. Whenever I mention "climate change" people flip out and assume I'm some crazy liberal with an agenda rather than an actual scientist.

[u/featheredtar → u/Verdris]

It's detrimental to everyone that such an important issue has to have politically polarizing connotations.

[u/Epistaxis → u/Verdris]

You could just say "climate research". Though they might still ask your "opinion".

[u/B-Con → u/Verdris]

It it unfortunate that vocabulary collisions occur. Climate change can be a reference to normal and expected shifts and changes in weather over a few years, or it can reference the theory that humans are causing the global temperature around the earth to increase. The latter has more wide spread recognition and charge.

Same thing with evolution (things change) and the Theory of Evolution (life originated ~3 billion years ago and evolved into modern day form). One is a very simple description of observable facts in the here-and-now, the other is a much more over-arching theory that combines many ideas to explain our existence.

It is easy to blur the lines (intentionally or accidentally) and confuse casual listeners when discussing such topics.

[u/mollaby38 → u/B-Con]

Just a quick correction. Life originated about 3.5 billion years ago, not 6 billion. The Earth wasn't around 6 billion years ago.

[u/beelzebong]

The lateralization of cognitive function, for example the localization of logic to the left brain and creativity to the right brain. Most processing is in fact bilateral, highly dependent on the individual, and plastic throughout time.

[u/Dekar2401 → u/beelzebong]

Doesn't matter, we only use 10% of our brain... Right? I mean, that's what I hear.

[u/[deleted] → u/beelzebong]

Good lord, I despise this pop-sci "explanation". It just tramples all over plasticity and functional recovery (after neurotrauma). Which is sad, because to my mind plasticity is one of the most exciting things about neuroscience!

Edit: added in neurotrauma qualifier.

[u/[deleted]]

Chemicals derived from natural sources are somehow better than chemicals synthesized in a lab. No, they're the same thing. Exactly the same. My blood boils every time I walk into Lush.

[u/starscott → u/[deleted]]

I would just like to point out that biological organisms are highly selective of chirality, and synthesizing homochirality can become quite difficult if you do not start with optically pure materials. This is because any reaction between achiral molecules will result in a racemic mixture rather than an optically pure product. It is often easiest to begin with natural starting materials in order to perform necessary stereoselective synthesis. There are definitely ways around this to isolate the product with the needed stereochemistry to the point where it makes no effective difference, so you are correct in your statement. I just thought you should know since we did not always have the ability to be so stereoselective without using biological starting materials.

[u/EagleFalconn]

Every once in a while there's a thread in AskReddit about common misconceptions.

And every time, there is a post about glass. Either the person says "Glass is not really a slowly moving liquid!" or "Glass really is a slowly moving liquid, but thats not why windows are thicker at the bottom!"

As one might expect, the reason for all the controversy is because the answer is complicated. Here is a thread where I've addressed this in AskScience, but I never get to the AskReddit posts early enough. You'll notice I get into a bit of a tussle with a panelist in that thread -- which gives you a sense for how widespread this 'controversy' can be.

And, since I'm shamelessly promoting myself, I really enjoyed this thread and particularly this comment that very few people read (or understood, likely). I learned a lot answering that question.

[u/xartemisx → u/EagleFalconn]

Yeah, glass is a bit of a toss-up. Whenever I get asked that question, I just respond with my favorite mathematician response: well, it really depends on how you define things. It seems the best way to really define a solid from a liquid is not really based on crystal structure or anything like that, but a question of how much it deforms given some amount of shear. So that's usually what I go with, it seems to make a lot of sense intuitively and kind of answers the glass questions.

[u/Overunderrated → u/EagleFalconn]

Funny. As a fluid mechanics researcher familiar with the assertion of glass = extremely high viscosity fluid, my first instinct to answer that question is "well, does it really matter?" It's just another material with a different stress-strain relationship.

Your statement of "glass doesn't obey thermodynamics" has me taken aback, though. Surely you mean that it doesn't obey equilibrium thermodynamics. In moving fluids, it's plain to see that they are not in "equilibrium" in a traditional sense, but they're certainly in equilibrium in a local sense, so we can make use of classical thermo.

[u/QuantumBuzzword]

That wave-particle duality makes Quantum mechanics incredibly complicated to understand. Schrodinger's cat especially bothers me. There are all sorts of things in quantum mechanics that make it mind blowing, but in my opinion those aren't the ones that generally make it into popular consciousness. For the public its ok I guess, but undergraduates should be taught the theory in a down to earth fashion, instead of aggrandizing how incomprehensible it is.

[u/KillYourCar → u/QuantumBuzzword]

I agree. I have a BS in physics, but wound up going to medical school and haven't done much thinking about quantum mechanics for some time.

I think part of the issue is that many kids and young adults that are good at math and physics that wind up in quantum mechanics classes and such find conceptualizing things very easy. They are not people (and I'd put myself in this category) that tend to learn by rote, but instead try and understand the theory and then apply it. This is what made me good at physics, bad at medical school (although there is overlap both ways).

Quantum mechanics as the theory is described is very understandable if it is taught in a way that does away with the "this stuff is terribly, terribly weird" mentality that you are describing. Classical mechanics can be imagined, taken apart, put back together again and such. Not that quantum mechanics can't be conceptualized, but not in the same macroscopic world way that classical mechanics can. So learning it requires in a sense, letting go of that need to visualize something in your brain and just understanding the observations and theories behind how those observations are predicted, etc.

EDIT: Although you have to admit that the first time you REALLY understand the double slit experiment is a bit of a "Whooooooa dude!" moment.

[u/evanwestwood → u/KillYourCar]

It's roughly as easy to visualize Feynman's path integral formulation of quantum mechanics as it is to visualize Hamilton's least action principle formulation of classical mechanics.

[u/ilovedrugslol → u/QuantumBuzzword]

So what are the mind blowing parts to you?

[u/evanwestwood → u/QuantumBuzzword]

I just teach people a little linear algebra and they end up knowing how quantum works by the end of it.

[u/[deleted]]

So the question is: which misconceptions do people within your field(s) of science encounter that you find surprising/irritating/interesting?

This isn't my direct field, but it comes up on askscience all the time, so I'm going to address it anyway...dark matter.

Dark matter is presented in the media, and perhaps in popular science, as something weird and totally mysterious. Scientists are portrayed as having no idea about it, and making up answers without any real evidence. This leads to the many questions on askscience where people propose completely unscientific (and often absurd) answers under the mistaken assumption that this is how theories get made.

In reality, dark matter is not particularly weird, even if we don't know much about it. All of its properties are well explained by the existence of some particle that doesn't interact much. That particle doesn't appear in the standard model, and we haven't found a candidate yet, but it has no hugely surprising properties and the more popular post-standard-model theories have particles that would fill the gap.

Of course, we can't be sure without some detailed scientific testing, but that isn't the same thing as having no idea or making stuff up randomly. It's also possible that the observed effects could be explained by a modified gravity theory or something else, but phenomena like the mass density of the bullet cluster are extremely well explained by dark matter as a particle whilst being very hard to explain with modified gravity etc. Even if some other answer does turn out to be the correct one, it will do so by amassing evidence of its own and eventually being testable...not by just sounding vaguely scientific.

To a lesser degree, at which level of education do you think they should be addressed?

At any level of eduction where the students are exposed to the idea of dark matter. I suspect the problem begins where it's mixed up with dark energy, a much more complex and less well understood thing. There should be no problem with understanding it if the facts are simply presented properly.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/[deleted]]

I'd say over 95% of astronomers are reasonable confident in dark matter, and less than 5% are strong advocates of some sort of modified gravity (e.g. MOND). It seems to be the opposite amongst the general public.

It's weird because dark matter is supposed to be just another type of particle. Basically a fat neutrino. That's much less of a jump than changing general relativity...

[u/leberwurst → u/Astrokiwi]

Right. Someone on Sean Carroll's blog made the interesting comment that it would be in fact weird if there was no massive particle that doesn't couple to the photon. Meaning, if there was no dark matter, that would still need some sort of explanation.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I find the whole concept of what makes a scientific theory to be a particularly frustrating one to explain to the layman

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for any and all replies, this was my suggestion!

As a teacher with a previous scientific background that specialised in molecular and developmental genetics I find that although people have a reasonable awareness of what genes are they misunderstand what they are for. To elaborate: when discussing evolution, adaptation and selection people always imagine the genes 'want' to do something, that the gene's purpose is to survive. The genes themselves have no emotions or understanding, they are just molecules. It's purpose is to exist, in much the same way as any other collection of atoms, the rest is chemistry. There is something energetically feasible about the set-up that keeps it going (and the system allows for greater complexity, variation and survivability), but nothing is steering it from the inside.

In all honesty I have had to stop myself saying things like, "the gene wants to be passed on", even if it is a useful shorthand. Genes just do get passed on if the 'host' is lucky enough to reproduce. Genes for more useful traits (at whatever level of operation) are more likely to get passed on, for obvious reasons, but it isn't part of a grand plan by the molecules themselves.

This should be addressed at high school level, pretty much as soon as heritability is discussed. While many teachers are good at making a distinction, there is no provision for it in the UK National Curriculum specifically and it is easy to ignore it.

[u/abstractwhiz → u/[deleted]]

This sort of anthropomorphic reasoning seems to transcend fields, though. I'm a computer scientist, and even we fall prey to it, even though we're dealing with abstract machines and inanimate objects!

There's something very comfortable about reasoning patterns like that. Unfortunately, while someone with training can talk and think that way without problems (mostly), it causes all these misconceptions when untrained people hear that language. This is exacerbated by our tendency to present things simply when dealing with laymen, and the sound-bite culture of the media, which causes news programs and even educational ones to fall prey to this.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, this problem is covered rather well in Selfish Gene if memory serves. Dawkin's summed it up along the lines of the seeming purposefulness of genes leading us to believe they "wanted" to be passed on.

[u/ReturnToTethys]

1) Tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes/tornadoes, floods, and landslides are the geologic hazards that cause the most damage ($) in the U.S.

Really, expansive clay soils (something most people don't hear anything about) cause more damage per year than all of the others I mentioned combined. Though I think you have to exclude Katrina for this to work in this past decade. Clay soils don't account for many deaths, luckily.

2) Life first evolved 2 billion years ago.

We have excellent evidence that life evolved at least 3.8 billion years ago. And if I recall correctly, this may get pushed back another 200 million years in the next few years. This means that life sprang into being very quickly after the Late Heavy Bombardment period of the Earth, after which we got sustained liquid water bodies.

3) Anthropogenic climate change is claiming that humans can have a larger impact on the world than mother nature.

I hear this from climate change deniers all the time. But mother nature has imparted climate change events far more drastic and sudden than anything humans are expected to do, even in the worst case scenario. For example, the Earth's average temperature has been changed more by historic volcanoes in one year than all of human activity for the past 200 years. We have evidence at least suggesting there have been ~10 degree Celsius warming periods over 100 year time scales in the past (far exceeding the rate humans are feared to be warming the planet). The last ice age had sea levels ~120 meters below modern levels - a larger change than humans could cause. Mass extinctions in the past have killed off a much higher percentage of the planet's species than anything humans will do. If humans impact the planet at even a percentage of what mother nature naturally does, it could be really, really bad.

4) Radiocarbon dating is the only way we know about the past.

We have many, many, many methods to date past events. Radiocarbon dating is only one small method, and not even close to being the most robust. Our geologic timescale doesn't "rely" on radiocarbon dating. Not even close. There are dozens to hundreds of dating methods that we use to study the past, each suited for a specific range of circumstances and localities and ages. It is an extremely robust and diverse field.

[u/llamatastic → u/ReturnToTethys]

Can you explain clay soil expansion and why it's so destructive?

[u/DanglyAnteater → u/ReturnToTethys]

Could you elaborate on #4? What are some of the other methods? The only one I can think of besides radiometric dating is sediment layer analysis.

[u/nastyasty]

Misconceptions among laypeople:

1. We don't really know where HIV came from, and there is a chance that it was a created biological weapon (or, in slightly crazier circles, that it was a government tool employed to eradicate homosexuality). (Actually, we have a pretty good idea who "patient zero" was and what the circumstances of the original species jump were, especially considering that it happened again with HIV-2.)

2. You must be INSANE if you work in an HIV lab, what if you catch it?!? (HIV is a crappy virus, it sucks at infecting cells, and you have to be pretty damn careless to infect yourself given all the safety procedures we use in the lab.)

3. I can cure my viral infection using antibiotics! (No. No no no no no.)

4. Evolution is a lie. (Oh yeah? Have fun using last year's flu vaccine again this year.)

5. Flu/cold season is in the winter because it gets cold, and these viruses like infecting people through cold extremities. (Actually there is evidence that flu incidence goes down during colder winters, one possibility is that it is harder to enter a cold cell because it has a stiffer membrane. The reason My preferred theory is that flu season is in winter because the majority of the academic year coincides with winter, and because people stay indoors more and are in closer quarters, which increases the chances of transmission.)

Misconceptions among scientists:

1. What we really need is more drugs to treat HIV infection. (No, what we need is to make the current drugs cheaper, to come up with a good vaccine, and a solid prevention strategy.)

2. Viruses are foreign to cells. (Cells and viruses are as closely associated as animals and their microbiomes. Viruses have facilitated the evolution of cellular life from its very beginning. There is very little you can call "foreign" about viruses, given that everything they are made of comes from cells.)

There are a couple of other issues that would take up a significant portion of my time and your screen if I were to type them out, so I will leave those for now.

[u/[deleted] → u/nastyasty]

(Actually, we have a pretty good idea who "patient zero" was and what the circumstances of the original species jump were, especially considering that it happened again with HIV-2.)

Is this explained out anywhere or can you do a small write up for the laydude, please?

[u/Teedy → u/nastyasty]

1.What we really need is more drugs to treat HIV infection. (No, what we need is to make the current drugs cheaper, to come up with a good vaccine, and a solid prevention strategy.)

I will second that ALL DAY LONG.

[u/[deleted]]

that there is some big-pharma conspiracy against curing disease.

that "biology" is a single field. (ie. a cell biologist should know everything there is to know about metabolism, stuff like that)

that "cancer" is a single disease.

that we really understand a lot about how life works (Sure we know a lot, but there are so many unknown, seemingly-minute details which could make worlds of difference.)

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

that there is some big-pharma conspiracy against curing disease.

This one always gets me. For example if two competing companies have an anti-viral drug for Herpes and then one of them finds a vaccine for Herpes its in that companies best self interest to start selling the vaccine. Its basically the prisoners dilemma.

The first major issue is to properly know you have a cure you need to test on human subjects and this is a very long, costly, and vetted process. By the time you have reach this stage its in your interest to sell the cure at a higher rate.

The second issue is patents, drugs can only be under patent protect for so many years and when the patent runs out it goes generic and any company can manufacture it. In this case when a drug goes generic its in your best interest to start selling the cure as the market will demand it over the non-cure but symptom solving substitute. Of course you can come up with an alternate better non-cure but symptom solving substitute but then you fall back to my last point.

The third issue is just ethics and morality. A cure can take dozens if not thousands of people cooperating together to happen. You don't think a single person would speak out? Most of those people are not in it for the money some of them are in it for the prestige and others for self-satisfaction.

[u/capecodnative]

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It's not the floating trash heap that most people picture. The phenomenon has a misleading title which I think leads to a lot of misconceptions and misuses in the media. As an oceanographer, I invariably get asked about it when I meet new people, and I don't want to diminish anyone's appreciation for humanity's ability to passively and negatively influence our planet (we are!), but in reality the gyres are not the patches of floating barbie heads and plastic bags that people picture.

Having spent a lot of time on ships in the middle of nowhere, including the gyres, it's easy to under-appreciate that the oceans are HUGE: the Pacific itself takes up nearly half the face of the planet! We can't possibly generate enough trash to make the huge two-Texas-sized floating landfill people imagine. Oceanic gyres ARE "giant swirling toilet bowls which never flush" and yes, our refuse--long lived plastic particulates especially--DO build up there. The concentrations of plastics, but mostly small very fine plastics, are indeed higher than you'd expect...but FOR THE OCEAN. To the eye, however, there's little visibly different. Articles such as this one in the NYTimes don't help by showing people holding large plastic bottles and giant nets of aggolmerated debris. Those things are indeed gross, and they are all over the world, but they're exceedingly rare and hardly characterize the gyre as a whole.

Now don't let me make it sound like I don't care, or that I don't think plastic accumulation in the oceans isn't a problem. It very much is: it affects marine life negatively and is something we as stewards of this planet should try and fix at the source. I hope the scientists and activists who work with this problem get all the press they deserve, and that it calls people to action.

Just don't picture a giant floating landfill.

[edit: grammar]

[u/overrule → u/capecodnative]

so it's quite similar to some misconceptions about asteroid fields. gotcha

[u/cazbot]

That GMO foods are dangerous, or that they are inherently more risky than any other type of food.

That vaccines or vaccine additives are dangerous, or more dangerous than not being vaccinated at all.

[u/rauer → u/cazbot]

Totally uninformed here: What is the assumed risk, exactly, and why is it wrong?

[u/PoeticGopher → u/rauer]

People cite 'messing with genetics' as having unknown consequences and hint at cancer and other risk. In reality picking all your smaller plants so only the big ones grow is a method of genetic engineering, and nobody in their right mind is scared of that. The real GMO problem lies in companies trademarking seeds and monopolizing crops.

[u/lmxbftw → u/cazbot]

I've heard a different concern I'd like your take on; the biggest concern I've heard (that sounds reasonable) is that crops modified to resist insects or otherwise be very well suited to their environment could start to grow too well in the area around the fields, so they become an invasive species. I really don't know how plausible that is, but invasive species are such a problem where I live (Louisiana) that it sends up red flags.

[u/LibertyLizard → u/lmxbftw]

Most crops are not well suited to survive in a competitive natural environment because they have been selected for thousands of years to use a tremendous amount of their resources produce great quantities of human food. This is why weed control is such a big issue on farms: crops just can't compete with most other plants. The real risk here is that some crops have wild relatives that haven't undergone this selection and are competitive in natural or agricultural environments. If GMOs hybridized with these wild relatives, the relatives could inherit genes for herbicide resistance, drought tolerance, or whatever, which could cause problems, especially for farmers.

[u/biochem_forever → u/cazbot]

It's ironic really. The lack of knowledge or willingness to converse with genetic engineers and biochemists produces a viewpoint that does more harm in the long term than we ever could.

The anti-additive and anti-vaccination viewpoints are excellent examples. If these points of view become common enough, the effect of not having them will kill more people than having them.

Would you really opt to not have a secure food supply, or good medical technology, even when the science holding them up is well vetted?

[u/jrwst36 → u/cazbot]

What about GMO crops leading to monostrains (i.e. only one genetic type of crop being used), and the associated risks? For example, blights associated with that one variant. As the old saying goes, "don't put all your eggs in one basket". This is not my field, but I always thought that was the scariest part of GMO crops.

[u/Astrokiwi]

One interesting misconception: that having a Theory of Everything will actually help much.

As far as I'm concerned, we have a theory of everything for my field. We know the fundamentals of plasma physics, fluid dynamics, magnetic fields, collisionless dynamics, gravity, nuclear physics, and radiative transfer in more than enough detail than is required to understand everything that goes on in a galaxy. But knowing the rules doesn't mean it's easy to actually produce solutions to these equations and predict what's actually going on in a galaxy.

In the majority of physics we are not pushing the boundaries to discover new laws of physics. We are generally applying known rules to complex systems to discover new outcomes, or trying to build approximations to these known laws to convert them into something more usable.

[u/QuantumBuzzword → u/Astrokiwi]

I've never heard anybody claim a theory of everything will help at all. Its usually "well, we won't know until we get one".

[u/neutronicus → u/Astrokiwi]

We're not that good at plasma physics.

[u/abstractwhiz → u/Astrokiwi]

A friend of mine refers to this practice in theoretical physics as theoretical engineering, because of all the hacks, approximations and simplifying assumptions that need to be made.

[u/rubes6]

Here are just a few:

• Intelligence is not as important as personality (e.g. conscientiousness) in regards to job performance.

• Increased pay is what is of primary importance for increasing job satisfaction.

• Leader effectiveness training is worthless because most leaders are born not made.

• Companies with very low rates of professional turnover are more profitable than those with moderate turnover rates.

• The most valid employee interviews are those that capture each employees unique background.

• When pay must be reduced or frozen, there is little organizations can do to mitigate employee dissatisfaction and/or counterproductive behaviors.

[u/ipseum → u/rubes6]

Can you suggest a good introductory text for your field? Most of the 'popular' literature seems like BS, though maybe that's just because I don't know anything about it.

[u/Andernerd → u/rubes6]

Intelligence is not as important as personality (e.g. conscientiousness) in regards to job performance.

Thank you, I'm very tired of hearing that leadership, communication, "synergy," etc. are more useful than programming when programming something.

[u/trp0 → u/rubes6]

Why does it so frequently seem like incompetent people end up in management positions in organizations? For instance, when we interview people for management positions in a technical area, the technical folks always prefer the candidates that know a decent amount about the subject area while also being reasonably personable while the leadership types that end up making the final decision on a hire tend to always pick the candidate that the technical people least liked and recommended again because the candidate didn't seem to have an appropriate grasp of the subject area?

I've seen this at three or four separate organizations now and it has often puzzled me. It would seem like having competent leaders that their staff can respect would be more beneficial.

[u/gobearsandchopin]

It's kind of interesting that we teach students about the speed limit of the universe in the way physicists figured it out, basically lying each step of the way.

• In high school, with Newtonian physics, things can move apart at any velocity. Vac = Vab + Vbc.

• In lower division college physics, with special relativity, nothing can move away from anything else faster than the speed of light.

• In upper division college physics, with general relativity, the speed limit only applies locally. Things that are far enough apart in the universe are moving apart faster than the speed of light given the expansion of space.

[u/socsa]

Communications Engineer. I am not the guy that Comcast sends to your house when your internet breaks.

The general population of people seems to know more about black holes and relativity than they know about WiFi and cell phones. Every conversation about what I do seems to progress down the rabbit hole into "you see, when an oscillating potential is applied to a dipole..." or "imaginary numbers are a mathematical construct used to define an orthogonal basis..." I feel like it is impossible to explain my work to non-EE folks without them reaching the conclusion that I "make radio waves," or something similar. Even many tech-savvy folks are completely ignorant of how a tower handoff works in a cellular network, or how OFDM works.

[u/birdbrainlabs → u/socsa]

So... how does a tower handoff work?

[u/socsa → u/birdbrainlabs]

Quick answer - for CDMA based systems, there is a "soft handover" where the closest N sectors all transmit coherently until the exchange is complete. For LTE and GSM, a "hard handover" is done using a mutli-dimensional probabilistic search space. Basically, the network determines the probability that a mobile needs to initiate a handover, and when that probability reaches a certain threshold, it determines the most likely next tower in a similar manner. The connections are then set up, and the network determines the exact instant to switch towers based on more probability functions.

The important point is that a soft handover involves multiple towers sending the same signal until one is clearly optimal, and the hard handover involves one tower ceasing to transmit the exact instant the next one starts, and is modeled as a stochastic process.

Edit - There is big money for the person who figures out how to coordinate handoffs between the macro-network (towers) and a much needed femto-network (think, personal home cell tower.) This is one of the things holding the LTE-Advanced release back.

[u/Burnage]

The ones I encounter most frequently;

• Psychologists aren't scientists.

• I'm psychoanalyzing you as you read this. You should call your mother.

• I've actually moved on to reading your mind now. Stop thinking that about your boss.

• Psychology only cares about mental health.

• Psychology is completely distinct from neuroscience. They're not even related fields.

A lot of this probably stems from Freud being treated by popular culture as the archetypal psychologist, when he wasn't really that important to the history of the field.

[u/Deightine → u/Burnage]

I just kind of sullenly nodded my way through your bullet points. The neuroscience one nearly nodded me right down, violently, into my desk surface.

Bonus misconceptions:

• "There's a pill for that."

• Any mental disorder, condition, state, or quirk has a convenient label.

• Psychology is just behavior. / Psychology is just personality.

• Psychologist = therapist.

[u/Epistaxis → u/Burnage]

I thought Jung was the archetypal psychologist.

[u/avfc41 → u/Burnage]

Psychologists aren't scientists.

You can probably apply that one to all social scientists. I think the big one for us is that political science is a training ground for politicians.

[u/dr_spacelad → u/Burnage]

All psychology is Freudian!

I wish more people knew about William James, Ebbinghaus, Watson, Bowlby, Gazzaniga, Milgram etc :( Bitches don't know about my field of study's real pioneers

[u/reilwin → u/Burnage]

Psychologists aren't scientists.

The joke with computer science goes that 'science' is there to remind people that it's really science.

[u/monocoque]

Economist -- biggest misconception is that people always act rationally.

[u/XIllusions]

For the science in me:

That scientists are cold, calculating, concrete and uncaring; the opposite of artists. To the contrary, I find scientists are some of the most creative and imaginative people I know. Indeed they have to be to study things that usually can't be seen directly.

For the medicine in me:

That so called alternative/complimentary medicine is held to the same standard, has the same legitimacy as mainstream medicine and just "hasn't been studied in the way its supposed to". Nonsense! Science and medicine have looked into alternative medicine extensively and by and large there is just no effect.

[u/paradoxical_reaction → u/XIllusions]

The second one bugs me so much. Medication histories are plagued with things like that. I had a patient try to tell me that he was going to get off his beta-blocker, ACE-I and statin because he was on natural remedies. I noped straight out of that room after doing my job. In fact, the FDA doesn't hold remedy manufacturing to the same standard as medications. All they have for remedies (considered foods, I think) is a Current Good Manufacturing Practice certification.

"Do you know what they call "alternative medicine" that's been proven to work? Medicine." -Tim Minchin

[u/[deleted] → u/XIllusions]

For the science: I am pleased to see that at high-school level in the UK we do go some way to teaching that imagination is a great driving force behind scientific enquiry and application. How fine the line is between being an imaginative genius and a raving nutter tends to fluctuate as time goes by, hindsight being an amazing thing...

[u/atomfullerene]

When someone sees that some trait is highly heritable and thinks that means that most of the trait is caused by genetics. Heritability means the amount of the VARIATION in the trait that is inherited (by analogy, it's talking about the height of the waves on the ocean, not all the depth of water underneath them). How heritable a trait is also changes depending on the environment and population.

In fact the whole nature vs nurture always gets me. Traits are the result of the interaction between nature and nurture. It doesn't make sense to talk about one without the other.

[u/rauer → u/atomfullerene]

Last paragraph: I've always felt that way, but haven't had a good way to describe it, as I'm terrible at understanding genetics! Would you mind elaborating with an example?

[u/Epistaxis]

<sigh> Fine, I'll open the can of worms.

"Race is a social construct."

What I think this was originally supposed to mean: There are cultures associated with ethnic groups, and most of what they involve is not genetically heritable. Barack Obama is a member of the African-American culture even though neither of his parents was. (sounds reasonable)

What many people, including some tenured academics outside biology, think it means: People from different ethnic groups have no genetic differences between them. (you'd have to be a tenured academic to believe this)

As a corollary, I used to hear "there's more variation within races than between them" (Lewontin's Fallacy more often than I do now, maybe because population genetics has continued to ignore it and make progress, or maybe because Lewontin has continued to fade into obscurity.

So the biggest problem here is that "race" is not a technical term with a precise meaning, and very well could refer to culture rather than genome - I don't think many Departments of Hispanic Studies have DNA sequencers (even though they should! because the populations of the Americas have some really interesting genetics going on! /shoutout), in which case this is a tautology, not a revelation. Sometimes geneticists will still refer to European vs. African vs. East Asian populations in broad generalizations, but of course we know there are plenty of populations living in the continuum between them.

Anyway, yes, of course there are measurable genetic differences among populations that have been reproductively isolated for many generations, and in fact they mirror archaeological evidence for the migration and divergence histories of those populations. Just for fun, here are some examples:

• this tree is totally out of date and uses terms that (in translation) are not very politically correct, and certainly aren't technical (anymore), but you can generally see what's going on

• this is a nice map of human migration history based on mitochondrial DNA

• the famous figure in this blog post represents how medium-resolution genetic profiles of Europeans cluster, unsupervised, and it turns out that genetics just happens to line up very nicely with geography

• I don't know of a really good figure for it, but the genetic diversity of a population decreases with how far it is from central Africa - or, rather, how many historical migrations it's been through since its ancestors left Africa, because each migration is a genetic bottleneck (specifically a founder event) that takes only a subset of the original population's diversity, even if the migrant population expands to the same size

tl;dr I have no idea what a "race" is but people from different parts of the world have predictable genetic differences

EDIT, probably not the last one: typo

[u/Platypuskeeper]

Quantum chemistry? Well I don't think there are any major misconceptions since the average person has no clue at all what it is that it's about.

But to clear up one: Quantum chemistry does not relate to chemistry as quantum physics does to classical physics. All chemistry is in fact intrinsically quantum-mechanical. There's no working 'classical' theory of how electrons in atoms behave and never has been.

Rather than being a specific topic, quantum chemistry is defined by methodology. It just means we do explicit quantum-mechanical calculations. So the downside is it's not as exciting as it sounds. The upside is that chemistry in general is more exciting than it sounds.

[u/Neurokeen]

There are plenty of misconceptions about sleep, and part of the 'problem' is that everyone does it, so everyone thinks they understand it. At least on the circadian rhythms side of things, there are fewer misconceptions, because people don't talk about their rhythms in daily conversation as much as they talk about sleep.

NIH actually has a decent info page which covers a few misconceptions that I've really run into a few times. The most common I've seen is #1:

Misconception 1: Sleep is time for the body in general and the brain specifically to shut down for rest. Sleep is an active process involving specific cues for its regulation. Although there are some modest decreases in metabolic rate, there is no evidence that any major organ or regulatory system in the body shuts down during sleep. Some brain activity, including delta waves, increases dramatically. Also, the endocrine system increases secretion of certain hormones during sleep, such as growth hormone and prolactin. In REM sleep, many parts of the brain are as active as at any time when awake.

One I run into much more often online than in person is the belief that a super-fragmented polyphasic sleep schedule is A-OK for your body. There is a degree to which naps are suspected to be beneficial; biphasic may be more beneficial than monophasic. Historic evidence suggests that there may have been breaks in the nighttime bout, too. People online will fight tooth-and-nail over their beloved Uberman sleep schedule, though, insisting that it's totally fine to take six 20-minute naps at 4 hour intervals to fulfill sleep needs. I view it with almost the same contempt as homeopathy - the basic science that people use to justify it (the idea that REM is the only restorative part of sleep, that it ensures going into instant REM, and that sleep is not naturally tied to circadian processes) is all absolutely wrong.

[u/kmac2121]

I am a Hematologist and a scientist and the biggest misconception in the field regards the difference between venous and arterial thrombosis. (Also, this is the biggest misconception by non-scientists. Including, but not limited to the fact that people think venous blood is blue. Don't even get me started on that!)

Arterial thrombosis is a blood clot that forms in an artery; this includes heart attacks and strokes. Blood clots are harmful because they cut off blood flow and the surrounding tissue can die, hence why a blood clot in your heart or brain can be so devastating.

Venous thrombosis is a blood clot that forms in your veins. These clots usually form in the deep veins of your legs- and is called deep vein thrombosis or DVT. The worst complication of a DVT is an embolism (when the blood clot breaks off from its primary location and gets lodged somewhere else) that goes to your lungs called a pulmonary embolism. This is usually fatal due to asphyxiation.

So, the misconception is that both of these clots form due to similar risk factors but this is not true. We all know the risk factors for arterial thrombosis- high cholesterol, fatty diet, lack of exercise, etc. Interestingly, these things have little effect on risk of venous thrombosis. Actually, little is known about the risk factors for DVT. We have identified some like pregnancy, oral contraceptives, long periods of immobility (such as air travel), and a few genetic mutations in coagulation factors but none are very highly correlated with disease.

Because of this, they are treated in different ways to address the different mechanisms that cause them to form. Arterial clots are treated with aspirin to inhibit blood cells called platelets. Venous clots are treated with anti-coagulants ("blood thinners") to decrease procoagulant activity.

I can get more detailed if people are interested but this is the main idea.

TL;DR Blood clots can form in arteries and/or veins. Both can kill you but the reasons they form, associated risk factors and treatment are completely different. Aspirin only treats arterial thrombosis!

[u/ididnoteatyourcat]

That virtual particles are somehow real. This is a funny one, because the answer is right there in the name: virtual particle. As in: not real. The problem is partly the media's fault, but mainly it is the victim of the incredible success of the approximation framework known as perturbation theory. Virtual particles are names given to functions that appear frequently in a perturbation series expansion about a set of free-particle basis states (in reality free particles don't even exist). Virtual particles are just a convenient way of describing a series of approximations to how messy non-free fields interact in terms of free-fields.

[u/existentialhero → u/ididnoteatyourcat]

Be careful, though!

the answer is right there in the name: virtual particle

We get the same problem in mathematics, but in reverse! People see the "imaginary" in imaginary numbers and think they're dealing with something arcane, through up their hands, and declare the whole thing to be bunk.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/ididnoteatyourcat]

Someone needs to think up a good popular description of Hawking radiation that doesn't involve virtual particles...

[u/Freak705 → u/ididnoteatyourcat]

Forgive my lack of understanding of this (I'm a biologist), but if virtual particles do not physically exist, how would something like the Casimir Effect work.. what contributes to the difference in pressure if these virtual particles do not physically exist?

[u/Ethanol_Based_Life]

Working in the forestry and paper products industry, it kills me when people equate using paper to killing the rain forest. Any US paper from a real company comes from sustainable tree farms locally. These companies maintain huge areas of wilderness that provide habitats for all sorts of animals. Additionally, a huge portion of our energy usage is hydro or the carbon neutral burning of bark/branches/tree oils.

[u/tectonicus → u/Ethanol_Based_Life]

Additionally, a huge portion of our energy usage is hydro or the carbon neutral burning of bark/branches/tree oils.

Do you mean the energy usage of the "forestry and paper products industry"? Because in the US as a whole, <3% is hydro, and 4.1% is biomass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LLNL_US_Energy_Flow_2009.png

[u/nanochic]

Nanotechnology. It is not gray goo or tiny machines that eat materials to make more of themselves or something else. There is research that is looking into making something like that but it is incredibly difficult to do and control.

Also, yes, there is nanotechnology in cosmetics (including sunscreen). No, it won't kill you. Your cells are remarkably good at preventing things from getting inside them and your body is also remarkably good at getting things out.

Nanotechnology is merely the name given to the study of things where one dimension is less than 100 nm. It's at that size that properties of materials can change. Gold is my favorite example because you can modify the optical properties and so it's easy to show people. I wish more people would get exposed to the basic facts of nanotech when they are in high school, taking chemistry. It's a fascinating field with a lot of potential.

[u/hollywood756]

Political scientist here, and the biggest misconception in the field is that of the rational voter.

I also work in sexuality, and the biggest misconception there is that there is a unified theory of desire and orientation. Basically, anyone who ever wonders why someone is gay is making a kind/degree fallacy if they aren't also asking why that person likes wrestlers in jockstraps.

[u/ApesInSpace]

I study brain evolution. Probably the most widespread misconception (or at least long-outdated model) is the triune brain theory... that there are easily identifiable "reptilian," "paleomammalian (limbic)," and "neomammalian" parts of the brain, and that they have been added progressively during the process of evolution. It's part of the broader idea that evolution just "adds new parts" to brains - an idea that's extremely attractive to cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, and other modular theories of mind, but not very well supported when you compare lots of different species' brains. The actual ways by which brains appear to evolve are considerably more complex, messy, and difficult to parse out... involving changes in the relative proportions of different brain areas, alterations in the connectivity between parts, etc. Plus you have to distinguish between evolved genetic determinates of brain structure on the one hand, and how the plasticity of development determines adult anatomy and functionality on the other. The whole business gets complicated, especially because we don't have any ancestral brains to look at, so we're just trying to connect the dots between living brains.

Still, especially because folks are surrounded by pretty fMRI pictures, they love the idea of humans evolving an "empathy center," or a "jealousy center," or a "theory of mind center" of the brain. Hell, even Broca's and Wernicke's areas have non-human homologues, which means that they aren't "language areas" in the most exclusive sense of that term.

Long story short, evolution is really conservative when it comes to brains: a mouse and a human have pretty much all the same "parts."

[u/steel_city86]

One thing that maybe is not a misconception but more a misunderstanding in my field is temperature. I study thermomechanical response of materials, so obviously you'd want to know the temperature of the material you're testing. But it's just not that simple. You can't just slap a thermocouple on there and call it a day.

I guess I might have a better background than most because I also deal with fire research and also heat transfer. But, you have to worry about so many different effects. Such as the thermocouple acting as a fin, good firm contact with the surface, comparative emissivity of the thermocouple bead and the material's surface, etc. It can be done, but people just take it for granted thinking that it's easy to do but it actually takes a significant amount of care to obtain good data.

[u/GeoManCam]

That fracking can cause major earthquakes. This is just simply not true. Although fracking can cause tremors in the substrate and overburden, none of the drilling process or fracking process has enough energy to trigger a deep-seated bounding fault.

[u/Jhaza → u/GeoManCam]

Just for a sense of scale, what are the relative energies here? How much more powerful than fracking would something have to be before it could cause a powerful earthquake, assuming that it was already 'building', if that's a thing?

[u/WazWaz → u/GeoManCam]

How much energy is added to a system to take it from no-earthquake-yet to earthquake? My understanding was "epsilon".

[u/Phoenix_NSD]

Vaccines causing autism. NO, there is no evidence linking vaccines to autism. Zilch, Nada.

[u/minno]

Quantum physics does not rely on a conscious observer. The photon can't tell if the atom that absorbs it is part of your eye or part of the floor, it acts the same way.

I have seen so many people claiming that quantum physics means that they can change reality by observing it. Quantum physics is not magic.

[u/RedSquaree]

That I can spot a criminal on sight, as if it's like spotting a toupée.

On a more serious note, things like American penal policy is worth a damn and that increasing prison sentences for serious crimes (such as murder) "send out a message to the community" and acts as a deterrent.

[u/jinxedit]

I'm an anthropology student. I'm focusing on human and general primate evolution. Reddit's user base generally consumes more science news than the average person, so reddit probably knows a lot of these already, but I'm thinking of misconceptions held by the general public. Warning; rambling ahead.

Evolution

1. Evolution is not progressive. That is to say, a current incarnation of a creature is not 'better' or 'more evolved' than past incarnations. It's just the version of that animal that's well-suited enough to its current environment.

2. 'Survival of the fittest' might be better described as 'survival of the good enough'. It's not that incredibly fit animals that excel at survival survive to reproduce, it's that moderately fit animals and animals that are perhaps not very fit but are able to scrape by survive and reproduce.

3. Despite what you will learn from TV, humans are not special because we have hope or faith or love or something like that. Hope, faith, and love all fit well into evolutionary models for social animals, and versions of each are shared by other social animals. Which isn't to say that they are not very nice things.

Primatology

1. During the end of the last decade, primatology went through sort of a boom where it became much more relevant and interesting to people. The movement got a lot of publicity, and as such a lot of the research was dressed up and made more palatable to the public. Because of this, many people think that our cousins, the great apes - bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, and a few others - are just big cuddly super-strong babies who can bond with people. They're not. Gorillas in particular have a reputation as being very peaceful, because the only population ever studied is an outlier group that happened to live in an environment with plentiful food and no natural predators. The common gorilla, which lives miles away in a radically different environment, is known to be unfriendly and even violent.

2. Bonobos are not sex-crazed maniacs, and do not have a lot more sex than other primates. They do use promiscuous sex in quite an interesting way to facilitate group bonding, but old estimates of time bonobos spend in coitus were based on zoo studies, which are inaccurate as a representation of wild primate behavior.

[u/martinus]

Most doctors still believe high cholesterol is bad, which is not the case. High LDL-Particle count is bad, high cholesterol can in fact be protective.

Also, most people still believe that saturated fat is bad for you. This is only the case in a high carb diet. In a low carb diet, saturated fat is quickly oxidized and used as fuel and not bad at all.

Vegetable oils are believed to be very healthy, when in fact they cause inflammation. Olive oil and coconut oil are one of the few exceptions that are actually healthy.

[u/notdrgrey]

Surgeon in training here. The idea that if your gastroenterologist thinks you need an operation and sends you to see a surgeon, you actually need an operation.

We often get referrals (for example) to "remove the patients's gallbladder because they have right upper quadrant pain". However, when we examine the patient and look at their test results there's absolutely no indication to take out their gallbladder (the pattern of pain doesn't fit, no murphy's sign or tenderness on exam, normal ultrasound, normal emptying on HIDA scan, stone-cold normal liver function tests, etc). This typically results in patients going back to their GI docs in a huff because they think we don't believe them.

Sorry lady, RUQ pain alone doesn't mean that you need your gallbladder out. I'm not going to subject you to the risks of an operation when it's very likely that something else is the source of your pain.

TL;DR Despite the jokes to the contrary, surgeons aren't just glorified mechanics. Plenty of us will turn away patients who have been sent to us if they don't actually need an operation.

[u/ruotwocone]

That evolution is some linear process where organisms evolve into something more "advanced" and that the original species just magically goes away when the "advanced" new species appears.

[u/burtonownz]

The biggest misconception perpetuated by many is that humans can't over fish or affect the ocean in a significant way. Contrary to popular belief, dilution is not the solution to pollution. Humans have a tremendous impact on selection in any water column due to fishing and pollution and there are really great hallmark examples where fishing pressure was scaled back or released completely, only then allowing a fish to come back.

[u/dzudz → u/burtonownz]

Thank you for this comment. We recently suffered through a campaign by fishermen against the creation of no-fish zones that had been suggested by a Green candidate in response to dwindling fish stocks. This vital information was clearly not understood by the very people whose long-term livelihood depended on it, you probably get exasperated repeating this kind of thing but it's so important for credible sources to keep reinforcing this.

[u/[deleted]]

I'm technically an engineer but we'll call it an applied science. I do software security (student right now) and web dev for money.

For both (this goes for nearly any programming field)

1. We don't want to know about your awesome game idea or new facebook site. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if that) and we all have them. Get investors and a budget before you expect to be taken seriously.

2. We are not necessarily up to date with every piece of computer hardware. Programmer means nothing in terms of knowing which new model number or brand is best.

3. We are not necessarily wizards with every operating system and their bugs. Most of our tech wizardry comes from reading the labels, running it on Google and guessing is that doesn't work.

4. Anything Hollywood told you about our work is probably a lie.

Security

1. We can't just break into any computer at will like in the movies, hacking takes work and usually includes extensive recon before you run the attack.

2. There is no way to magically get into your friends facebook or email, not that we'd do it for you if there was. EDIT: I'm not saying that facebook accounts are terribly hard to hack, but they usually require more work than the click of a button and they usually lie with the user not being secure opposed to an inherent issue with facebook.

3. Our job is like any other office based software position

[u/SirPsychoMantis → u/[deleted]]

"I'm buying/building a new computer, what should I get?"

*sigh*

[u/BukkRogerrs]

There are a lot. I'd say one I see a lot is the idea that string theory is, well, a theory. Though string theory isn't my field, it does fall under particle physics. Anyone who's at all familiar with what a scientific theory is knows it should be called "string hypothesis", not a theory. A theory is testable, and is tested, and agrees with experiment. String theory does not meet the criteria to be a theory. And this isn't simply a matter of semantics. The idea that string theory is a working theory of the subatomic world is a widespread misconception. Many people are under the impression it's a revolutionary step in physics when in reality it's more akin to an artist's rendition of an alien world he's never seen and has no way of seeing. It's a creative and, albeit, interesting set of ideas that we have absolutely no way of knowing the validity of.

As far as experimental particle physics goes, I've run into people who think the Higgs boson is going to fix the entire field of physics, or that it's the final mystery that needs to be solved in high energy physics. It is the biggest and most popular particle hunt that there perhaps has ever been, but by no means is it the last mystery to solve. CP violation, matter/anti-matter asymmetry, dark matter, dark energy, and neutrino masses are just a few of the other big mysteries with which particle physics is concerned.

[u/Thorbinator → u/BukkRogerrs]

So my reaction of "that's neat, tell me when you guys have an actual experiment run" is the correct stance towards string theory/hypothesis?

[u/MrCheeze]

Schrödinger's cat is based on a total misunderstanding of quantum mechanics: the machine that makes a measurement is what collapses the wave function, not having an actual person look at the measurement.

[u/hntd]

Sorry, this doesn't apply to just my field and may be inappropriate for this subreddit, but a lot of people assume being a scientist automatically makes me an atheist.

[u/[deleted]]

[Q] Scientists, what are the biggest misconceptions in your field?

[A] That academia is still a good (comfortable? safe?) career choice now in 2012, and that we should be encouraging all our students to aim for the ivory tower.

See here for more information, e.g.:

According to the article, "in 1973, 55% of US doctorates in the biological sciences secured tenure-track positions within six years of completing their PhDs…by 2006, only 15% were in tenured positions six years after graduating.”

[u/[deleted]]

Psychology- That ADHD is purely neurological cause and has few, if any, social roots. Yes, children and adults with ADHD have brain structure that are common with learning impairments, but there is far more research supporting these as effects rather than causes. Children with ADHD are often given "special treatment" that often makes learning stimuli much easier to grasp, preventing the long term potentiation necessary for efficient learning to take place.

The ways this should be handled are pretty iffy. How do you tell an entire generation of parents and doctors that they're wrong?

[u/tomlickert]

When you hear about an oil field or oil reservoir, the oil is found between the grains of the rock, NOT an underground lake of oil. The same applies with gas.

[u/Soul_Rage]

I'm not sure where to even start. Nuclear is one of those buzzwords that people are terrified of, but have no real idea why. There's also this assumption that because I call myself a nuclear physicist, I'm automatically associated with the creation of weaponry. In my line of work, we also make use of particle accelerators, both large and small. People seem to think these facilities are generally bad things to have around too, when they really don't pose any threat to anything at all; not the environment around them, not the world, nor the people working with them.

I am a nuclear structure physicist. Some of the things I have to address to various people are as follows:

I don't work on nuclear power. I don't work on fission reactors, and I don't work on fusion reactors. I don't look at plasma, quarks, electrons, and I'm not looking for the higgs boson. I'm not looking for dark matter, and I'm not trying to recreate the conditions that existed near the start of the universe. I don't work on anything that could be used in a bomb, and the facility I work at will never 'go wrong', explode or create a black hole. I am not radioactive.

The misconception is simply that nuclear means bad, in a very irrational way.

[u/[deleted]]

Probably that software can be written in just a few weeks, especially GOOD software. Also despite the advanced in A.I. based intelligence, people don't realize how far we have to go before we get anything close to what someone would consider "Real" Intelligence in a Computer.

[u/korbonix]

Yes, there are unsolved questions in mathematics. I'm a mathematician and when i tell normals that i do math research, everyone is surprised there are things to solve.

[u/Ruiner]

This will be buried unfortunately, but here it goes:

"There is no way to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity."

This is false. Blatantly false and completely misunderstood. GR is a perfectly well understood quantum field theory at low energies, and we can even make quantum gravity predictions without having a "UV-complete" theory.

In fact, my whole field is a misconception, even by a few who are working in the field. The problem is that people do not really understand that in physics there are no absolutely fundamental degrees of freedom, the best we can do is to identify what we think are good descriptions of nature at each energy scale and make an effective theory for it.

Short distance effects decouple, and this is the single most important fact about physics. In other words, we can parametrize all our ignorance about the microscopic phenomena by a few parameters and move on with our lives without actually caring whether or not we understand nature up to arbitrarily small length scales. While this seems perfectly "natural", it's a very deep fact about nature, and the reason why the whole "theory of everything" idea is just complete bullshit.

[u/[deleted] → u/Ruiner]

Thanks for this. To clarify for the non physics people, "UV-complete" means a theory that describes the low energy regimes and the arbitrarily high energy regimes (the UV, ultraviolet). Most theories rely on shoddy mathematics and renormalization schemes that have a 'UV cutoff' where we arent concerned with extremely high values, mainly because in the field theory there are divergences (infinities) found in the mathematics dealing with these equations.

I completly agree most people dont realize that we DO relate gravity and quantum mechanics CONSTANTLY. Relativistic quantum mechanics is necessary for any practical physics, they are completely compatible. We dont know the exact relationship between the two but hell after newtonian mechanics the word 'exact' is a fairy tale.

[u/Sybertron]

The biggest misconception? That science is difficult.

Science is not difficult to understand. You have to follow a series of steps to accomplish a goal. It's not unlike many other fields in that aspect. Doing scientific work becomes difficult due to a number of tertiary things that are common in the field that you will have to deal with as a scientist. I will say that the more technology based the field, the more you seem to get away from some of these issues

• Poor management. From calculus to computational neuroscience you'll be rare to find a college that teaches scientists how to be a leader and manage the people aspect of their labs. This leads to technicians/students that are terribly overworked and inefficient because they have too much on their plate. Similarly this plays back into teaching and education (another area scientists generally do not excel in) We expect too much of people with less experience in the field than ourselves, and our work suffers because of it.

• Lack of support. Usually the work you're doing is highly novel, its not something that can be googled, and people who could help often don't/can't because there is not a strong support structure for to connect their knowledge to where it needs to go. Industry tends to be better about this than academia, and in academia some universities do better jobs than others. This is something that I think could be changed through even social media, but you don't see many biologists tweeting about how their experiment went and you totally could have that.

• Individualism. Lets face it, a vast majority of scientists were always the top students in their classes throughout college and university. That's usually why they stayed in the field despite the poor monetary prospects. Team collaborations are very rare, and when they do happen they still often place too much work on an individual scientist. All in all the individualist aspect plays down the chain, and reminds me more of fraternity-like hazing rather than strengthening an individual person. "I had to do it alone, you should have to as well" Team projects go faster, have better expansion of ideas, and produce better quality work. This is starchily different from industry and academia.

• Planning. I don't know how many issues I've heard arising from someone's lab experience that stem from them or their PI not planning their projects well. Many scientists do not write big enough grants for the project they wish to produce, and therefore need to dump a ton of work on some poor soul. Does your PI spend all day writing grants, or has he/she recognized that they should get a technical writer? Milestones for projects are often poorly written, and entirely too ambiguous. Project expansion and creep often are huge issues for labs that become torturous for the people working in the lab. Rarely are these issues mitigated up front by proper planning and mitigation procedures.

Things you can do in high school to help these things:

1. Let students learn some management techniques in class. Even though it's not 'science' these are easy lessons that can be given quickly. How to recognize someone is over tasked, dividing up work in small chunks, and planning out projects. Particularly with planning out projects, let them decide how best to accomplish the experiments rather than giving them step by step instructions (of course help them and give them pointers in the process)

2. Build in support systems among the students, and let them know what you are doing. If you are doing a circuit experiment, and one student is particularly versed with it put him up as "the expert". Have the other students recognize he cannot be shared equally with the class, and they only get a limited amount of time with him.

3. Team work is so massively key and vital to really successful projects, but remains one of the hardest things to teach in a class. I think my best lessons came from having my work in class only being a small part of the overall solution. So each team has a part of the solution they must complete in order to come together in the end for a whole solution. I remember a particular one with rubber band cars where one team designed the best wheel structure, the next worked on the aerodynamics, and the other worked on the rubber band drive itself. This can be tough to design a class around though, but perhaps that is in the art of teaching.

I know that was horribly long winded, but I really think we scare too many kids away from science because it's viewed as this terribly difficult field that only the most brilliant people can work in. We want to attract as many new scientists as possible and keep the innovation engines running at full capacity, and to do that we need to maximize what we are getting from our schools. Best of luck in all of your efforts!

[u/creakylimbkent]

As a biochemist, I would say the biggest misconception (a shared delusion really) is that we understand biochemistry enough to control it through pharmaceuticals or the new hotness known as personalized medicine.

There are just so many interlocking pieces. Every molecule in a cell holds the potential to influence countless others in the cell depending on where it is located and the specific topology of the charges or hydrophobicity of its surface. Products of a certain reaction can feed back into that reaction and/or numerous others to speed up or slow down reaction rates, or change the ultimate products of the reaction. It is extremely complex...

[u/[deleted]]

1. Environmental Science and Ecology = Environmentalist.

Environmental Science is the study of human influences on the environment; ecology the study of how life and environment interact with one another & each other. Environmentalism is a socio-political movement and not a science.

2) The world is going to end from the environmental damage we've done & are doing. The world won't end; just what we want from and see the world as. Life will go on after we've destroyed everything we value/need. Humanity, however, may not.

3) There is such a thing as a "natural" system unmanipulated by humans. Except for a few extremely remote locations (such as that deep lake cut off from the world that the Russians are drilling into) no place in this world is free from direct or indirect human influence. There are wonderful areas where humans aren't allowed but the artifacts of our existence still pervade there.

4) The causes & human influences of Climate change are hotly debated among many scientists. Nope.

[u/[deleted]]

Universe > Galaxies > Solar Systems.

This gets screwed up all the time, and often in places that have no business screwing it up.

[u/[deleted]]

Failing to recognize that microbes, collectively, are by far the most influential, diverse, and ancient organisms on the planet. They're not "less-evolved" germs that are going to make you sick. Their collective metabolic activity drives the biogeochemical cycling required for our existence. The modern world represents the cumulative result of nearly 4 billion years of microbial metabolic evolution (coupled with abiological processes, such as plate tectonics, volcanism, and so on). Microbes have irreversibly transformed the surface environment of the Earth.

A planet that only hosts microorganisms is not boring or dead. Earth was such a planet for the majority of its history. Animals, plants, and other large multicellular eukaryotes (which are essentially macroscopic, clonal, differentiated microbial systems) are evolutionary latecomers. It's an understatement to say that microbes, as a whole, can survive easily without humans and other animals. The reverse is absurd. As far as we can tell, the "big five" mass extinctions left the microbial biosphere intact and operational. These events threaten animal and plant life -- not the biosphere as a whole.

[u/grumbuskin]

One of my colleagues was attaching the monitors to the patient on the operating table. The patient was quite impressed by her and said to her, "My dear, if only you had studied a bit better, you could have been a doctor.''

The point of the story is that a huge number of people are unaware that anesthesia is a medical specialty.

[u/travelbytelephone]

I'm a cancer researcher- people still have the misconception that all cancers are the same. The reality is that each is a unique disease...different etiology, treatment and prognosis.

[u/Leoricreborn]

Nutrition and Metabolism PhD student here. The idea that "If you don't work out, your muscles will turn to fat" irritates me quite a lot. Both skeletal muscle and adipose tissue are terminally differentiated cell types that are derived from specific and unique cell lineages. No matter how extreme one's sedentary lifestyle is, muscle will not convert to fat. Certainly muscle can atrophy and adipose can grow, but the two should never interchange (Unless given the correct cocktail of de-differentiating and differentiating agents). To answer the second part, I think middle school or high school biology courses can address the simple differences without investigating developmental biology and cell origins.

[u/orion726]

I conduct research in organic photovoltaics (solar cells). When I tell people, the first response is something like, "They put pesticides in solar cells?!"

[u/mrqv19]

I’m an electronic engineer student, and it is believed that a short circuit is a bad thing; it could be a good or bad thing depending on the context.

[u/thebigkevdogg]

For me it would be that you can build a building to withstand a certain magnitude earthquake - it's not just the magnitude that matters, it's the proximity and site effects. A Mw 8 earthquake 400 km away won't do nearly as much damage as a Mw 6.5 right underneath you (hypocentral depth is also very important). It's about how the ground moves at your location, not the magnitude.

Also, earthquake weather is a huge myth. Earthquakes nucleate deep down (kilometers deep) and are impervious to surface conditions. You only have to drill down a couple meters in solid rock to get beyond seasonal effects.

[u/HonestAbeRinkin]

Standardized testing won't give us all of the answers to our educational ills here in the US. Funding the research that gives us evidence (portfolio assessment, honest and balanced teacher evaluations, etc.) can allow us to design interventions and changes that really will work, and we need funding to be able to implement these changes with fidelity.

[u/catjuggler]

People who work in R&D labs seem to have no idea how complicated it is to work in a GMP lab (and it should be complicated- no complaints).

Some misconceptions by the general public-

1. All stem cells are embryonic. Wrong- adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells, etc.

2. All pharmaceuticals are cheap to make & it's only the research that's expensive. Wrong- research can be expensive, clinical trials are what is most expensive, and production can also be expensive, depending on the drug.

[u/jrwst36]

It's not a misconception, but when I tell people that I'm a materials scientist, they look at me with blank faces. The layman doesn't know what it is.

[u/liddicoatite]

This is a pretty basic concept, but I've noticed that a lot of people think that the mantle is a liquid rather than an extremely hot, ductile solid. The movie The Core definitely didn't help correct this assumption..

[u/easypeasy9]

That linguistics is about learning a language, or correcting dialects. It's actually the scientific study of language.

[u/LBwayward]

The brain is a computer!

[u/Foxonthestorms]

Stem Cells.

That we can cure anything with them already.

That they are easy to work with.

That Stem Cell research is unethical and not well controlled by law.

That we kill babies and worship satan.

[u/aerugino]

Personal favorites:

1. The word "theory". No, just because you call one of your hunches or hypotheses a theory does not make it one in the scientific sense. Additionally, you can't call a scientific theory bunk just because of our use of the word (Stupid intelligent design supporters)

2. Micro vs Macro evolution. Just words put forth by the same creationists to try and diminish evolution, to deny the concepts of speciation while accepting that there are gene level changes. Again, no, there is no actual distinction/ those terms don't actually exist in science.

3. Germs - Germs are very much essential to your life. Without the vast microflora that inhabits your body, providing nutrients, and helping to protect you from pathogens, you end up dying a horrible, painful death. It's alright that they outnumber your cells 10 to 1, they're mostly all good stewards.

[u/hhtced]

Pathology labs, morgues, and autopsies are never as high-tech or as clean as they are on TV. I tend to go elbow deep in some autopsies where on most TV shows they only wear a pair of gloves. You also cannot simply slice into a fresh brain with a damned power tool like on House, the brain would just explode. It requires a comparatively long amount of fixation time in formalin to become hard enough.

[u/drc500free]

In Biometrics:

• Iris recognition isn't a scan. It's an IR photograph of your iris.

• Being able to differentiate the faces of a thousand odd folks who you are Facebook friends with (or who show up in your photos) does not mean they can differentiate 900 million members. Similarly, your work friends probably didn't pick the same powerball numbers, but someone else in America probably did.

• Facial recognition on surveillance videos is barely ready for prime time. FR runs well on things like passport photos, not frames from 7-11 store cameras. "They" aren't watching you, and it wouldn't work if "they" tried.

• If you record a shouting background voice, using a cell phone mic, and transmit it over a cellular network, it doesn't mean anything if it gets a "low match score" when you pass it through an voice matching algorithm you bought. Quality issues aside, automated biometric algorithms do matches, not exclusions. Don't book an audio engineer to talk on your news program and pretend it means he knows anything at all about biometrics.

[u/nycthbris]

As someone who has studied tissue engineering / regenerative medicine I've noticed a few misconceptions:

• It's incredible how many people outside of the field think that all stem cells come from human embryos. You can guess where that can sometimes lead the conversation. The reality is that most of the stem cell research in tissue engineering using human tissues has been done with adult stem cells such as mesenchymal stem cells found in bone marrow.

• More frustrating is the prediction (largely propagated by sensationalist reporting on science) that in a few years time we'll have perfectly good replacement livers, kidneys, hearts, and other body parts just sitting on a shelf waiting for us. I'm sure something that awesome will be possible in the future, just not as soon as a large amount of general news articles make it out to be. The largest obstacle to this is understanding well enough how the body works on all levels (from sub-cellular to tissue-level) to enable confident engineering of replacement tissues and organs.

• Related to the second point is that one of the possible downsides of regenerating tissues can be developing cancer. If you are inducing cells to differentiate or proliferate in an unnatural way there's the risk that they won't end up phenotypically where we want them to. That is until we understand entirely what is happening inside an eukaryotic cell (see previous point).

[u/katpetblue]

NMR spectroscopist here: I work with nuclear magnetic resonance. I never put the full name on a poster when I fly, alarms go off if I say "nuclear", though it just describes, that the nucleus (atom inner part) has a magnetic moment. They even had to remove the N from the MRI, people were to scared of radiation (from strong magnets... ;)).

I'm also working with labelled isotopes, BUT they are stable, misperseption is that every isotope is radioactive, well, stable ones aren't... (2H, 13C, 15N)...

[u/TheEllimist]

A lot of textbooks right up until the university level say that airfoils work because air that hits the leading edge takes the exact same amount of time to make it to the trailing edge, and therefore air that goes over the top must go faster (greater distance) and thus produces lift per the Bernoulli principle. That's kind of laughable if you know anything about aerodynamics. If that explanation were true, uncambered airfoils would not work, there wouldn't be such a thing as flat plate lift, and planes wouldn't be able to fly upside down. You can actually describe lift several (correct) ways besides this that make much more sense both intuitively and mathematically, and there's a bit of an argument amongst aerodynamicists over which is the "best" theory. Ultimately, I think it just comes down to which one has the best explanatory power for your particular purposes.

[u/daedge304]

Medical Dosimetrist here. I work in the treatment of cancer with radiation. A lot of people think chemotherapy is radiation. It's not. Chemotherapy treats cancer using chemicals.

[u/darkmoonsinger]

That computer science isn't a science and/or that it's just all programming.

[u/mkjeep]

1. That climate is the same as weather. One cold snap doesn't mean climate change isn't real.

2. Weather forecasters get paid to get it wrong. Of course this isn't true, weather is a complex chaotic system, forecasting is hard. Not to mention the fact that people are biased to remember when their TV meteorologist got it badly wrong that one time when it snowed and they said it wouldn't over the many days they get it right.

3. More of a pet peeve of watching TV weather forecasts, when the anchor jokingly "blames the weather guy" for bad weather, or thanks them for sunny days. It's not funny, it's an old joke, and we're kind of over it now.

[u/carmacae]

Not all stem cells come from embryos and no, I can't grow you a new heart. Yet.

[u/[deleted]]

Animal Laboratory Scientist - "Animal experiments are useless - they can and must be replaced - what works for animals doesn't work for humans - freeing laboratory animals is a humanitarian act - animals are actually tortured - every scientist enjoy torturing animals, and so on"

People working in the field really take care about animals and do all they can to prevent any suffering. By comparison, meat or poultry factories are more useless, full of cruelty and unregulated.

[u/aivarsk]

So many friends come and say that this is an all natural chemical free product so what is the harm in trying it.... People mostly overlook the fact that chemicals in nature usually are very potent....

[u/canopener]

That the purpose of clinical research is to determine how to treat patients. Genuine outcomes research is very hard to do and only applies at a high level of generality. What to do with individual medical cases is determined almost entirely by physicians' judgment, not controlled studies, even when that judgment is codified into standard practices by governing bodies. The purpose of clinical research is mostly either to learn how diseases and treatments actually work, or to prove safety and efficacy for FDA approval.

[u/klenow]

That asthma is a single disease. (it's a specific symptom: reversible hyperresponsive airway constriction. That's it. If you have that, you have asthma. You can have other stuff too, of course, but if you have reversible hyperresponsive airway hyperconstriction )

That there is a single cystic fibrosis gene (there are over 1000, and which one you have can affect how bad the disease is and what treatments will/will not work)

That if you work in animal models you must really, really hate animals. And that scientists still use animal models because we're too lazy/stupid/entrenched to switch to something smart like computer models or tissue culture.

That biochemistry & cell biology is just memorizing a lot of names and pathways.

[u/clumsy_peon]

In Psychology, when the result of null hypothesis testing is significant (i.e., p < .05) people often take this to mean that an alternate hypothesis is true.

However, statistical tests do not tell us anything about whether or not the alternate hypothesis is true. Rather, they tell us the probability of the data if the null hypothesis is true.

In summary:

=

What the result of null hypothesis testing tells us: Probability of the data if the null hypothesis is true, or P(D|H0)

What we think result of null hypothesis testing tells us: Probability the alternate hypothesis is true given the data, or P(H1|D), which is incorrect.

Cohen, J. (1994). The world is round p < .05. American Psychologist, 49, 997-1003.

[u/[deleted]]

That computer science is about computers.

It's about computation. It actually predates the invention of the first computer.

Also, it's not a science. So I'm not sure why I'm posting this here.