Talk:List of common misconceptions/Archive 28

Archive 25

Archive 26

Archive 27

Archive 28

Archive 29

Archive 30

Spinach entry

Many people think that spinach is a good source of iron. And that appears to be true, at least for cooked spinach which provides 20% of the recommended daily intake of iron. What is the misconception here? Raw spinach contains oxalates, which block absorption of iron in the intestines, but it's not at all clear that all or even most of the iron ingested is not absorbed. Meanwhile, cooked spinach appears to be a good source of iron. We need to either improve this entry or remove it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:26, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

As far as I can tell after a glance at the RS and the Spinach page, the misconception is that eating raw spinach, as many do, is a good way to obtain bio-active iron in one's diet, since high oxalate foods exert a negative effect on iron absorption. We should reword the entry to make it more clear to a casual reader that raw spinach is the crux of the misconception. Oh, also, we're missing one RS from the spinach page, I'll add it now. Joe (talk) 18:00, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The first paragraph of [1] says Popeye helped popularize the misconception (of how good a source of iron spinach is) based on a misplaced decimal point, which then made its way into WWII propaganda. Spinach's calcium content doesn't strike me as a misconception.

Reviewing some nutritional research, while the inhibitory effects of oxalates on calcium and calcium on iron seem well defined, the iron-oxalates link (per [2] section 4.3) I didn't find numbers for (even though some research papers I saw make passing references to the inhibitory effect of oxalates on iron absorption). Anderjef (talk) 20:12, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Here's the relevant text from cite #4:

It is a widespread perception among nutritionists/dieticians that oxalic acid is a strong inhibitor of iron absorption. It is stated (without evidence) in dietary publications and cookbooks...

Calcium oxalate appears to depress iron absorption in some circumstances — the addition of 1 g calcium oxalate to a cabbage meal was associated with a 39% depression in iron absorption...

The influence of oxalic acid/oxalate on iron absorption may depend on the chemical state of the oxalate in the food. Spinach is rich in oxalic acid/oxalate but also rich in calcium; if the oxalate exists in the form of calcium oxalate, then it should not be able to bind ferric iron in the food and therefore have a minor influence on iron absorption.

This is what we're basing our verdict of "miscomception" on? Cookbooks claim it "without evidence". It may depress absorption by less than 50% (if the 39% figuere is applicable to spinach, then spinach is still a good source of iron, raw or not.) It should have "...a minor influence on iron absorption". We either need to find much more solid evidence of this or we need to remove the entry. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Regarding reference #4, the un-evidenced claim that oxalic acid is a strong inhibitor of iron absorption also appears in research papers (including one of the existing references), cabbage is a low-oxalate food hence "there was no relationship between the oxalate content and iron absorption when vegetables that contained large amounts of oxalate were examined; iron absorption was poor from spinach..." (yeah, this nutrition stuff is messy), it is only postulated that oxalates' effect on iron absorption depends on the oxalate's chemical state, and in the paragraph at the end of the section they go on to cite a source (93) which says the results in question "did not reach statistical significance (P>0.16)" (n≤16).

So, I'm not sure what to make of it all. Perhaps the jury is not out yet? Hence we remove the entry (even though, for whatever reason, Spinach decided to leave it up)? Reference #3's story makes a lot of sense to me as to why I might have had inflated views of spinach's iron content. Anderjef (talk) 23:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Anderjef, I think you might be thinking about a different (and unless I'm mistaken, recently removed) entry. Also, I see no reason to remove this entry, it seems fine to me. Also also, Mr Swordfish, did you mean to spell misconception "miscomception"? If that was purposeful, it made me giggle, and if it wasn't, well, it still made me giggle. :3 Joe (talk) 23:33, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@JoePhin You're referring to the Popeye entry? I thought that one was about whether in his universe, Popeye's strength came from spinach's iron or vitamin A. Here, from my understanding, people misattributed a misconception to a pop figure. Anderjef (talk) 23:40, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

I've now read through one of the cited sources "Spinach in Blunderland" by Michael Mielewczik & Janine Moll from 2016. Definitely worth a read at https://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/bitstream/handle/3/eissn-2512-5923_annals21/Annals21.pdf (scroll to page 61) The main takeaways:

1. Our source #3 by Terence J. Hamblin is problematic: "...Hamblin had given no original references for his claims related to spinach, iron and Popeye. The criminologist Mike Sutton took up the idea, tried to follow the chain of evidence, and concluded that Hamblin might have made up the story of the decimal error. Hamblin himself could not remember the source of his claims 29 years later..."
2. The myth that spinach is particularly high in iron content goes back farther than is commonly recognized, dating at least to the 1850s. "The legend that spinach is rich in iron has therefore emerged at a much earlier point in time than it is commonly assumed today."
3. The idea that the myth stemmed from a "decimal error" may itself be an urban legend.
4. It's complicated. "It soon became clear that the ironic story of how spinach became rich in iron and how it was debunked is one of burlesque character and provides more potential twists than Rubik’s cube."

So, where does that leave us? The wording of the current entry appears to be simply false; while the iron content of spinach has been overstated, saying that it is a "poor source" of iron strikes me as equally erroneous in the opposite direction.

Web MD (https://www.webmd.com/diet/iron-rich-foods) lists spinach among "other sources of iron" along with peanuts, raisins, broccolli, and pasta. It doesn't make the cut for "good sources" with foods like lima beans, sesame seeds, wheat germ having about three times the iron content as spinach. It also distinguishes between heme iron, which is found in meats and is more easily absorbed than non-heme iron which is found in spinach and other begatable.

This site (https://www.healwithfood.org/articles/spinach-iron-content.php) seems to present a balanced view of the matter: "Today, we know that the claim that raw or cooked spinach contains extremely high levels of iron is simply a persistent myth, based on old and erroneous data... That, however, does not mean that spinach is a poor source of iron. In fact, a comparison of the iron content of common vegetables reveals that raw spinach contains a fairly good amount of dietary iron."

The role of oxalates in hindering iron absorption seems to be a matter of dispute, so I'd recommend simply steering clear of that in our entry.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

In light of the above, I'd suggest the following revision of the spinach entry:

Spinach is not a particularly good source of dietary iron. While it does contain more iron than many vegetables such as asparagus, Swiss chard, kale, or arugula, it contains only about one-third to one-fifth of the iron as lima beans, chickpeas, apricots, or wheat germ. Additionally, the non-heme iron found in spinach and other vegetables is not as readily absorbed as the heme iron found in meats and fish.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:01, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Alright, there appears to be some real conflicting research on whether oxalates depress ferrous iron absorption[3] or don't[4][5]

Given this discrepancy, we should mention that there is some disagreement as to whether oxalates inhibit iron uptake on the spinach page, and as Mr Swordfish suggests, we should not mention it at all here on the common misconceptions page (I don't wish to present anything that has a reasonable chance of actually being true as a misconception). I'm all in favor of making Mr Swordfish's proposed changes.

I can't make any comment on the decimal point stuff, I haven't had the time to really look into the sources yet, I might come back with something to say about it later. Joe (talk) 16:43, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Mr. Swordfish for putting time into researching it. I agree with your conclusions including that oxalates' role is still too contested but that spinach is neither a fantastic nor abysmal source of iron. I support your revised entry, though I question the utility of adding the final sentence about heme, considering I also read that red meats have other molecular compounds (not found in such vegetables) which increase iron absorption and that taking iron and calcium at the same time inhibits the uptake of the iron.

Also, thanks Joe for your help in this. Anderjef (talk) 20:38, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

:-) Joe (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

References

Criticism of "Common Misconception"

Efforts to delete this page have been driven by the page's alleged triviality and lack of clear inclusion criteria. In response to the latter, assessing whether something is a common misconception has been left up to whether a reliable source describes it as such, and whether the inclusion criteria is met to add extra barriers to entry. We have put this in place as many Wikipedia editors have different understandings of what is common, and what is a misconception, making it hard to form a consensus, but also because it's not up to Wikipedia editors to decide what is common and a misconception per basic WP:OR. There is a problem with both.

RS calling something a common misconception

There are two major problems with this as the standard. One is that a RS calling something a common misconception doesn't automatically qualify it as one. Searching "common misconception" in Google Scholar generates thousands of peer reviewed results with titles like "A common misconception about the Eyring equation" and "Addressing a Common Misconception: Ammonium Acetate as Neutral pH “Buffer” for Native Electrospray Mass Spectrometry". While adding them to their topic pages would qualify them for the criteria, we don't add them because the "common" group the misconceptions are held by is probably not universal, but rather within a population (mathematician/chemists). If the explicit criteria were updated to reflect this it would run into the problem of a definition of common (a belief held by a general population) trumping the phrase's inclusion in reliable sources. Even if this definition were added, it would incite further debate with what a general population is: the world? Countries? States? Ethnicities? Professions? If we want to introduce size as a qualifier, some professions will have more participants than countries have populations, and invites the question of where to draw the line. These questions all necessarily arise from disallowing something which has a RS calling it a common misconception.

The second problem with RS calling something a common misconception is that many sources don't explicitly say "common misconception". Many (most) say things like "popularly believed" or "although incorrect, it is commonly believed". While we may think these are equivalent to common misconception, to make such a determination we need to have a definition of common and misconception which we are evaluating this meaning against. This can get dicy quickly: some editors think urban legends are distinct from misconceptions, and I personally would say a key component of the meaning of common is that it is referring to a portion of a population rather than a mass of people, meaning saying "many people incorrectly believe" is not equivalent to "common misconception". To even have these discussions, and make any evaluation of phrasing being equivalent to "common misconception" involves invoking a definition of commmon and misconception not found in RS, but instead in a mass of precedent accumulated over 27 talk page archives and our own intuitions and original research.

This is not found in other pages. Imagine if there was a consensus of RS calling something a terrorist incident and the editors, by using their own personal, intuitive sense of what constitutes a terrorist incident was, decided to exclude it from the page list of terrorist incidents.

Defining Common

If we tried to make explicit our definition of common, as is necessarily required of the article to evaluate RS and phrases they use being equivalent to "common misconception", we run into many more problems. One historical proposed approach has been to have evidence for misconceptions being common, using opinion polling, however, where you draw the line is up to editors and still presupposes different questions common raises. I.e. if a poll has 10% of Italians confirming they believe in a misconception, is this common? 30%? 90%? Even at 100%, in terms of the globe, this is <1% belief and from such a frame of reference not common at all. Even though we don't do this mathematical line drawing, we do it conceptually in determining what groups can hold a misconception for it to be common.

Defining Misconception

While there have been more conceptual challenges to the page due to the difficulty of defining common, more problems have amounted from what constitutes a misconception. This has happened in both directions: sources describing common beliefs as false can be enough to merit entry, while some sources explicitly referred to beliefs as misconceptions have been repeatedly discounted. Beliefs have been argued not to be misconceptions if they're abstractions of complex ideas, if they're a misnomer, if they're a hoax, if they're pseudoscience, scientific meaning has changed over time, prejudice, when the facts are controversial (particularly when they're manufactured controversies), when someone has been lied to by someone they trust, where scientists have a technical definition for a term different from what is common, or dogma. There are many more and it's been up to editors discretion over time what qualifies as these. Key questions include whether the falsehood being propogated honestly or for gain can disqualify, and whether being presented with the correction being not able to change someone's mind can disqualify. Neither have a consensus, entries being decided either way.

Where to next

The inability to purely use RSs for the page due to such a process presupposing a definition of common and misconception while also being unable to define common and misconception have plagued this page and baked in OR and a lack of a clear inclusion criteria required for WP:LISTCRIT. A clear inclusion criteria will not, and cannot eventuate. Is this a reasonable assessment? If so, should the page be brought to AfD? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 18:31, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

The above text wall is a good example of Wikilawyering, particularly,

"Applying a portion of a policy or guideline to achieve an objective other than compliance with that policy or guideline or its objectives. Particularly when doing so in a way that is stricter, more categorical or more literal than the norm."

A lot of these 'objections,' presented as if they apply to this page in particular, are actually just general issues with Wikipedia. How do we determine what material to include in Wikipedia and what material to exclude? The answer is simple: editors determine, through consensus, what reliably sourced material is WP:Notable, and what material is not. Ultimately, the consensus of the editors is the only method used to determine whether material warrants inclusion for literally all material on Wikipedia.

Taking issue with the fact that editors must determine the notability of reliably sourced information through consensus is an objection to Wikipedia itself, not this page in particular.

Please see WP:NOTOR for an explanation of what OR is not. Being a core aspect of Wikipedia, the process of building a consensus to determine what editors find noteworthy enough for inclusion is definitely a wonderful example of something that is WP:NOTOR. I've seen appeals to OR misused a lot in my time, but suggesting that WP:N itself is WP:OR might just take the cake.

Our current inclusion criteria are more than sufficient. If a common misconception is notable enough to be mentioned on its home page, then it is almost certainly notable enough to be mentioned here. Simple as pie.

Where to next?

If someone just doesn't like this page for some reason, I suggest that such a person should no longer bother with it and go elsewhere. I will be only too happy to oppose any attempts to vandalize or mass-blank portions of this page that have been painstakingly constructed and lovingly maintained over the years, as I'm sure will the dozens of editors familiar with this delightful little subsection of the project who've worked so hard to make it what it is today. Joe (talk) 20:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Notability is not the issue. I have read through the talk page archives (I've briefly summarised most here) and AfDs and the reason our standard for inclusion is reliable sources describing things as common misconceptions is because there is a consensus that editors determining what is common is OR. We just cannot be the ones determining notability on this page. A quote from AfD3: "As with all Wikipedia articles, we defer to reliable sources. If reliable sources say that something is a "common misconception" (or some reasonable synonym thereof), then we include it. If not, we don't." What we have found, as I have noted (in too many words sorry), is that even with this, editors do necessarily engage in defining common and misconception in ways that overrule RS. I'm sorry if I went too far with the synonym criticism.

I'm not going to WP:POINT, but I doubt you believe if I added the misconception about the Eyring equation to its topic article then to this one that it would meet our "more than sufficient" inclusion criteria? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:19, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Good lord what a wall of text. Exercise brevity. Verifiability has never guaranteed inclusion anywhere on WP. The system, as in all articles, is that the editor(s) promoting inclusion of verifiable content must establish consensus for its inclusion. VQuakr (talk) 21:36, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

That is fine, but goes against the consensus reached that editors determining what is common is unacceptable. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. VQuakr (talk) 21:58, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Would you mind explaining how? I am not being (deliberately) obtuse. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:06, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

It never crossed my mind that you were. Items need to be verifiably common misconceptions to have a chance for inclusion, per WP:V and WP:NOR. Excluding verifiable items from the article for any of a variety of reasons (including but not limited to "not common enough") is normal editorial discretion that is subject to consensus. VQuakr (talk) 22:16, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate the first part as true, but from my reading of the discussion at the time the criteria was put in place the normal editorial discretion you note was given up. If you could read over the part of the AfD I got the quote from a listed above could you tell me if I'm misreading? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:22, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Are you seriously extracting a random quote from an 11 year old AfD that was closed as "a trainwreck" and attaching significance to it? Or are we talking about a different quote? VQuakr (talk) 22:58, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Suggesting that there is, or ever was, a 'consensus' that the editors on this page are not allowed to use standard editorial discretion and consensus-building to determine what does and doesn't warrant inclusion on this page (unlike literally every other page on Wikipedia) is not only wrong, it's super-wrong. One might even call it a misconception.

It is not OR for editors to use their discretion and common sense when determining what material taken from RS constitutes a common misconception, not any more than it is OR for editors to use their discretion and common sense when determining what material taken from RS constitutes a fatal bear attack in North America when deciding what to include in and exclude from the List of fatal bear attacks in North America page.

If I read an article about a fatal dog attack in Australia, and I used my editorial discretion to decide not to include it in the List of fatal bear attacks in North America page, I have not done OR because "the RS didn't SAY the dogs weren't also bears, and the RS didn't SAY that Australia isn't in North America, and if you bring up other sources suggesting that dogs aren't bears and Australia isn't in North America, that's just WP:SYNTH!" My face-value interpretation that dogs are not bears, and that Australia is not in North America, though quite likely nowhere stated within the RS itself, is not OR. Same thing if the RS talk about a fatal bear attack in North Carolina, but the RS doesn't explicitly state that North Carolina is in North America.

Simple interpretation of RS is not OR.

The exact same editorial discretion applies when determining what material to include on this page, or literally any other page. Joe (talk) 23:40, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

VQuakr I'm saying this quote isn't random, it's representative. You can lay it out to imply the position is ridiculous, but it seems very unridiculous to look at the context the criteria were created in when evaluating them.

JoePhin This simple interpretation of RS isn't what's at issue here. It is different from an RS calling something fatal and editors deciding to remove it because they have their own definition of fatal, when their previous inability to define fatal has got the page almost deleted. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

If an editor adds material to the List of fatal bear attacks in North America because a RS states that "a bear killed two people in Ontario," without using the word 'fatal' to describe the attack, that is no problem at all, that is categorical WP:NOTOR, and that is exactly the same type of editorial discretion that regularly and properly occurs on literally all Wikipedia pages. No one but you, User Rollinginhisgrave, is concerned that editors sometimes need to interpret RS. We do it on this page and we do it on every single Wikipedia page. You are the only one who thinks that the extremely normal Wikipedia process of common sense interpretation of RS, or simple editorial discretion, is somehow an issue. This is becoming silly. Joe (talk) 05:05, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

@Rollinginhisgrave: you selected the quote and asked my opinion; I provided it. I've been quoting policy and guidelines, not deep meta trivia. No, I really don't care even a little bit what the context was a decade plus ago or whether this page barely survived deletion back then. Our policies and practices have matured since then and the 2018 AfD resulted in a quite clear consensus to keep. VQuakr (talk) 05:20, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

JoePhin; You are right that I went too far with my criticism of usage of synonyms. A source saying something is a popular misconception can be reasonably read as the same as common misconception. However, saying "many people repeat this urban legend" or the equivalent doesn't involve such a simple reading. If I could ask you something, if 50% of Americans believe something, meaning 2% of the world population believes something, is that common? How would making and enforcing such a determination not be OR?

VQuakr; the 2018 AfD doesn't really touch on the OR issues, but thanks for your patience in dealing with my discussion of the page's history, I'll try to stay away from it. Could you answer the same question posed to JoePhin since I think it's important? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rollinginhisgrave (talk • contribs) 07:01, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

We've actually previously established a consensus that regionally common misconceptions are perfectly acceptable for this page. Joe (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Agree with JoePhin here. Though it's much easier to look at a specific proposed item than to try to establish precepts using hypotheticals. VQuakr (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Reading through the wall of text above, I had to go back to the beginning to see what actual action is being proposed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual particular question on the table appears to be: "...should the page be brought to AfD?"

My answer is no, for all the same reasons given in all the other failed attempts at AfD. But nobody needs my permission, or even our (that is, the editors of this page and readers of the talk page) opinion. Fell free to take it to AfD. Nobody's stopping you. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 19:51, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Creating an AfD with no chance of the discussion resulting in deletion is disruptive. I wouldn't want Rollinginhisgrave to take this to an AfD resulting in speedy keep, get dinged for it, and then feel like he'd been entrapped. VQuakr (talk) 20:25, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Joe, VQuakr; I'm not asking if there's a consensus. I'm asking if looking at it and saying, just because in the scale of the world it's not common, we think it's common isn't OR (without reference to RS). WP:LSC with "Avoid original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources" makes it clear we can't create an original criteria for what is common or not as this is OR. Joe, you keep linking WP:NOTOR, but that policy specifically advises against evaluating the accuracy of sources, which is functionally what we're doing when looking at a RS saying something is common and deciding it's not common based off our own definitions, whether these definitions are an editor's personal one or whether it's a page consensus.

Swordfish; I'm not just going to take it to AfD if it's only me, I might get an RfC if I don't understand people's interpretation of how I think the page violates OR, although I'm trying to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 11:46, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@Rollinginhisgrave: honestly we're bordering on WP:STICK territory at this point. If you still don't understand why this isn't OR I'm now sure how else we could explain it to you. No one has said we don't use RS. VQuakr (talk) 18:43, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

You can't ask 'how is it not OR if we are determining if something is common' "without reference to RS". The use of RS stating that something is a common misconception (or some synonymous phrase) is what makes the inclusion of material on this page WP:NOTOR.

The fact that we exclude some material for which there are RS that may literally use the words "common misconception" is also NOTOR. In 99% of cases, it's not an issue of us determining the 'reliability' of sources, although I note, it is the proper purview of Wikipedia editors to determine which sources are reliable and which are not. However, in the vast majority of cases, the exclusion of material which is literally stated in RS to be "a common misconception" is not because we find the sources to be unreliable; some RS may literally say the words "common misconception" to describe something, but not mean it literally.

Please see this example from WP:NOTOR to illustrate what I mean, taken from the Accurately contextualizing quotations section:

It is not original research to contextualize a possibly misleading quotation, provided this is done accurately and neutrally. A real-world example: A news article contains a passage specifically and only about polydactyl cats, not cats generally. Referring to the work of recent genetic researchers on American polydactyl cats, molecular biologist Danial Ibrahim is partially quoted: "From this, they hypothesized that all American cats must have a common ancestor, a founder cat who was polydactyl and then spread the trait across the U.S." The piece then continued its commentary on the polydactyl cat research.[6] A Wikipedia article may quote Ibrahim (a secondary source interpreting a primary-source journal paper) as concurring that the research "hypothesized that all American [polydactyl] cats must have a common ancestor". In fact, it would be a misuse of the source material to fail to clarify the quotation, much less to try to use it to suggest that all American cats, normal and polydactyl alike, share a common ancestor.

Taking into consideration the context surrounding any reliably sourced statement is always important. Note how, in the above quote, Ibrahim literally said that all American cats have a common polydactyl ancestor, but he did not literally mean it. There are instances where, in context, it makes sense to call something a "common misconception" among some tiny subgroup. For example, I might accurately say that "it is a common misconception among some stubborn paleontologists that whales directly descend from mesonychids," and in the context of a discussion about stubborn paleontologists, I might shorten that statement to "it is a common misconception that whales directly descend from mesonychids." In such a case, I would not be saying that it is literally a common misconception, despite my words. If one were to take my quote out of the larger context of a discussion about things stubborn paleontologits believe, that would be an example of quote mining.

Understanding the context in which statements are made, and interpreting them with that context, is an important duty of a Wikipedia editor. Again, this does not just apply to this page, but to literally any Wikipedia page. Taking material from RS out of context and using it in a way that it was not intended to be used (as with the polydactyl cat example), is something that we need to avoid on all Wikipedia articles. The fact that we exclude some material, even though it is reliably sourced, for this reason is right and proper. Joe (talk) 18:46, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

VQakr; I was making a narrow point, I recognise fully that RS is used. When saying "without reference to RS", I mean that in a hypothetical where 50% of Americans believe something and it is referred to as a common misconception, the reason we are including it is not as there is a page consensus that regional misconceptions can be included, it is because a RS has called it a "common misconception." If the consensus formed the other way, and a reliable source calling something common in America can't go on the page because editors understand it as not common in the world as a whole, such a determination would clearly be challenged as beyond the editor's purview as they're just using their own definition of common and enforcing it on the page.

Joe; thanks for taking the time to write this out.

I explain what I meant by "without reference to RS" to VQuakr above.

This isn't an issue of taking quotes out of context. There are two questions in the American example: should the example be included on the page, and should it be worded as "it is a common misconception that..." No one would argue with you on the second point that saying "it is a common misconception that..." would be inaccurately contextualising quotations, and as a result, we preface entries when held by groups with what group it is held by (i.e. "it is a common misconception in America that..."). The first question however is unrelated to the second, as it asks are misconceptions held by Americans common enough to be included on a page "list of common misconceptions." It questions what it means to be common, and we, with reference to our own understanding of what it means to be common, are drawing the lines. This is the OR in question. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

A note on woodshrikes

There is no hard-and-fast cutoff point at which something becomes common, and that is just fine. If one looks up the word common in the dictionary, one won't find that it says "something that occurs in more than 50% of cases" or even "something that occurs in more than 10% of cases" or anything like that. Something common 'occurs often, is found often, or is done often' (Google dictionary). What does it mean for something to occur 'often'? What percentage of occurrences must something occur in before it is occurring often? To try to answer this question is to embroil oneself in a Sorites paradox. The edges of what is 'common' or 'often' are fuzzy, not defined in significant figures.

How often, when birding, will one see a common woodshrike? If one counted up all the times one saw a bird, and all the times one saw a common woodshrike, and divided the latter by the former, one would have a percentage. If someone else went birding and did the same thing, they would have a different percentage. If one went to a different part of the country where common woodshrikes were more or less common, one would get a different number. If one went to a place in the world where common woodshrikes didn't occur at all, one would find that the number was 0%. If one counted up all the woodshrikes in the world, and divided that number by all the birds in the world, one would get a number, and it would probably be a pretty small number, and it wouldn't be the same number one would get if one counted up all the common gulls in the world and divided that by all the birds in the world, and the global percentage occurrence of common woodshrikes and common gulls might be significantly different from each other. All of this is fine, but in no way does it mean that common woodshrikes are not common, or that we can not call common woodshrikes common, or that we cannot have a page about common woodshrikes because "How are we defining what is and isn't common? What's the percentage cutoff? Are common woodshrikes really common?" It doesn't matter. Asking the question 'at what point does something become common' isn't even sensible (again, see Sorites).

Ultimately, it is not the job of Wikipedia editors to take a census of all common woodshrikes, or all instances of a common misconception, to determine if they occur at some arbitrary frequency. Our job is to look at what the reliable sources say, and report it in an encyclopedic fashion. With some rare exceptions, it is likely impossible to know exactly how common any common thing is, unless you really put in the work and count. The author of a reliable source used for a Wikipedia article does not need to have counted all the black haired men in the world in order to report that "black haired men are fairly common." So too with all other things, not even just common things. If a reliable source reports that "Platinum group elements (PGEs)... are extremely rare in the Earth's crust." we do not need to confirm it ourselves, we do not need to know what standard the RS was using, as long as we're reporting what the RS says in the same context the RS was saying it, that's all we need as Wikipedia editors.

As mentioned above, we can exclude material RS call 'common' in some situations, depending on context. We may also exclude material taken from sources where something reported as 'common' is obviously not common using a simple English understanding of the word 'common,' per WP:BLUE (e.g., if a source reported that 'it is a common misconception that humans have twenty-nine fingers, humans actually have ten fingers', we could comfortably determine that the source was not reliable through the use of common sense - this is very rare). In cases where something's 'commonness' is on the edge of what might be considered common, as will inevitably occur from time to time with concepts with fuzzy boundaries like 'what is common' or 'what is tall' or 'what is a pile' or 'what is a chair' etc., etc., the various editors may discuss it, and come to a consensus on whether it warrants inclusion or not. This is quite rare, I'd estimate that more than 95% of material added to this page is so unambiguous that it never gets discussed. In cases where something is ambiguous, we tend to err on the side of caution. All of that is fine, and also, all of that occurs on the vast majority of other Wikipedia pages.

I appreciate that you're trying to be very complete and very rigorous in your thinking, but it's not necessary, or possible, to rigorously define fuzzy categories. When you really dig down, outside the realm of pure mathematics, it turns out that all concepts are fuzzy at a high enough magnification. That does not mean we're only allowed to have Wikipedia articles about math. The fact that there is not a rigorous definition of the word 'chair' does not mean that we, as Wikipedia editors, can not use editorial discretion and common sense to accurately include and exclude information taken from reliable sources on the Chair page. Joe (talk) 23:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

@Rollinginhisgrave: this cycle of hypotheticals is worse than useless. Unless you've a practical concern here you are wasting electrons. VQuakr (talk) 23:43, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Joe; could you give me an example of another list article that you feel I would apply the same criticism to of editors applying OR?

VQuakr; I've given the example of an entry based off "A common misconception about the Eyring equation". You can pretty much sub this into the discussion if you want. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@Rollinginhisgrave: fails criterion 3. If it didn't, there still is no OR in choosing not to include it per WP:VNOT. I can't imagine what could still be confusing to you about this, but do you have any remaining questions? VQuakr (talk) 00:46, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

@VQuakr: It depends on the reason given for excluding via VNOT. If the reason is editors don't think it's common, that's OR per previous args. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:54, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

No. It. Isn't. The context of the sources matter. If this isn't clear to you by now, then we are in WP:CIR territory. VQuakr (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

When you say the context of the sources, you are referring to sources addressing a smaller group than other sources? Or something else? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Could I, give you, an example of a list article, that I, feel you, would think might involve editors engaging in OR? I hope this doesn't come across as unkind, User Rollinginhisgrave, I don't mean to sound mean, but at this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you thought every single page on Wikipedia, including all the list articles, were suffering from OR. I don't think you have a very firm grasp on what constitutes OR. If we have RS that state something is a common misconception, including that would not be OR. If we have RS that state something is a common misconception, and we don't include it for any of a number of normal procedural reasons, that, too, is not OR. Joe (talk) 02:03, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Could you just give me an example of one you think I might take issue with? For instance, I don't think List of terrorist incidents suffers these issues. If there's an RS that states something is a common misconception, including it wouldn't be OR. If you don't include an item because you don't personally believe it's common when a reliable source says it is, that's not a normal procedural reason and is OR. Etc etc, we've been over this. I'd love to see a page that you think does this definitional work outside of RS. If you could link one it would be a great help. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Seriously, are you trolling? The talk archives of that page are full of discussions about what should or shouldn't be included. Whether you would take issue with any of the decisions there is (of course) something only you could ever hope to answer. VQuakr (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

There is maybe one discussion about what should be included in the three years since the current list criteria came in which relies on a consensus of reliable sources and in no way have you seen editors since trying to exclude entries that meet the criteria because they have their own definition of terrorism. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Are there any particular misconceptions that you think should be included on this page, but which are currently not? User Rollinginhisgrave, perhaps you're not aware, but this is a dynamic list. The page does not purport to be complete, and you can add anything you think is missing. As long as it meets the inclusion criteria, it is unlikely to be challenged, and even if it is challenged and we have to have a discussion about it and reach a consensus to include/disinclude it, well, that's just how it goes on every Wikipedia page. You won't find a Wikipedia page where other editors can't challenge the material you add. Nevertheless, there's nothing stopping you from giving it a shot and adding material to the page, nothing at all. If you feel the page is incomplete, that's not at all wrong, this page is incomplete (and always will be), and you can help by expanding it. Joe (talk) 03:55, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I really would like it if you could link me a list article that you think I would find falls into the same issues as this one where editors are excluding what a RS identifies as meeting a definition due to editors own definitions. I don't mean to harp on about this, but I am skeptical of your claim that this is standard wiki procedure, and if it is, it should be very easy to find. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:13, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

User Rollinginhisgrave, I already gave you an example. List of fatal bear attacks in North America. What do you consider to be the southernmost extent of North America? Does a fatal bear attack right on the border of that furthest extent count? Is Mesoamerica part of North America, and do fatal bear attacks in Mesoamerica count? Is Greenland part of North America, and do fatal bear attacks in Greenland count? Does a fatal bear attack that takes place on polar sea ice, technically off the shore of North America, count as being a fatal bear attack in North America? If we previously decided that fatal bear attacks on sea ice do count, and the question comes up of whether to include a polar ice attack that's technically closer to Russia, but also fairly close to Alaska, and the person attacked walked from Alaska, what do we do? We have a discussion about it, and we decide what to include and what not to include in order to present our readers with the best encyclopedic experience. All of these questions, and more, are examples of edge-case situations where editors might need to use editorial discretion to decide what to include and what to exclude, and they might have entirely reasonable discussions about all these edge-cases, and they might come to a consensus that they won't be including Greenland bear attacks and that those can go in a different page, and that decision or any other like it is simply not OR.

If you think that deciding which way to go on any of those questions would be OR, then you do not know what OR is and you should be very careful before you go around making imputations of OR, because you're likely to offend someone with false accusations of OR. Likewise, when we editors have reasonable discussions about what material taken from RS to present on this page, we are not engaging in OR. I assure you, even if you're not aware, arguments and discussions about what exactly constitutes "X" and what should and shouldn't be included on "The Page of X" are extremely common all over Wikipedia, and in no way constitute original research. Does this make sense to you? Joe (talk) 16:25, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

I really appreciate you writing this out. I think there's a key difference here: there is a discussion in RS of what constitutes North America, and whether the places you list are in North America. When we argue whether these places are in North America, we have our discussion (or could) with reference to such RS. There is no such discussion in RS of what it means for something to be common (there couldn't be). List of fatal bear attacks has two components, whether it's fatal, and whether it's in North America. Both these questions have been discussed in RS, and if a source calling something a fatal bear attack in North America wanted to be contested (even if unlikely), we would be able to contest it with reference to other RS's positions on the questions. We can't do that with the phrase common (or misconception). As such, I don't actually think editors contesting any edge-cases you discuss would be OR. I hope this clarifies my understanding of OR, and that your understanding of it and my position on the page's breach of it aren't accurate. I would love to hear your thoughts. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:43, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Please see the above discussion on woodshrikes for a practical example of how we use and understand words like common on Wikipedia. The short version is: we use reliable sources to determine what is and is not a common misconception, and we use our common sense and our understanding of plain English to determine which reliable sources are germane. This is not original research, and it is the same process that is used all over Wikipedia for all subjects and all RS.

But anyway, what's this nonsense about "We can't do that ['that' being comparing and contrasting RS on a subject] with the phrase common (or misconception)"? I can understand, to some extent, being confused about how we deal with a term like common, a concept in the English language the edges of which are quite fuzzy. It's actually not a problem at all: fuzzy boundaries or no, we can include any and all encyclopedic material on Wikipedia as long as we have the RS for it - but I can understand your confusion about that for the word common. I can't understand how you would think that about the word misconception. 'Misconception' is nearly a pure logic concept, infinitely more well-defined than something with comparatively insanely fuzzy boundaries like North America. A misconception is a sincere belief in a false thing. The belief that "humans generally have 29 fingers" is a misconception. It's not a common misconception, indeed, no one in the real world may actually believe that humans generally have 29 fingers, but that doesn't stop it from being a misconception that no one holds. What is and isn't a misconception is eminently in the domain of what can be determined (and argued about) using RS. Take a look at the recently discussed spinach entry, where we compared and contrasted several RS discussing the role oxalates play in inhibiting iron absorption. If you look through the archives, you will see that we regularly have such discussions. Joe (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

@JoePhin: I've read back through your discussion of woodshrikes and as far as I understand it, your discussion hinges on a misunderstanding of WP:BLUE. WP:BLUE doesn't say you don't have to source things if they're obvious, it says you don't have to source things if they've obvious and such material is in RS. There's no such RS that says something common to a small group isn't "common". This is obvious from the fourth sentence from WP:V: "Even if you are sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it." It is also clear that our understanding of plain English isn't excluding things by "common sense", since anyone can, and has, made the observation that something believed by 0.3% of the world's population wouldn't generally be considered common.

I think the case for the article's issues around 'common' are easier to understand, I'll stick to discussing them, but needless to say, a misconception is not merely "a sincere belief in a false thing." In my original post I laid out multiple different ways that simple definition has been challenged, even when RS explicitly calls it a misconception. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:50, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with WP:BLUE. WP:BLUE applies in cases where something is so obvious or simple that it doesn't require a citation. For example, I don't require a citation that 2 + 2 = 4, or that flamingos are pink, or that the sky is blue, etc. The fact that common gulls are common is not WP:BLUE, e.g., it's not something that should be obvious to everyone. We can use WP:BLUE on this page for certain ancillary statements, but for the purposes of demonstrating that something is a common misconception, we never use WP:BLUE, precisely because if everyone knew it, it wouldn't be a common misconception. I'm not sure how you managed to so badly misunderstand this.

If we did not have RS calling common gulls "common gulls", it would be wrong for us to label them as such. But we do have RS stating the common name of Larus canus, as well as RS describing the parts of the world where common gulls are most common. So it is with common misconceptions. If RS describe a misconception as common, we may include it here (again, this is literally the opposite of WP:BLUE, which is a special case where we do not use RS. I'm still not sure how you thought that had anything to do with WP:BLUE when the conclusion of that section of my writing is "Our job is to look at what the reliable sources say, and report it in an encyclopedic fashion.")

I'm afraid you're not reading what other editors post very carefully, which is probably why this discussion seems so pointless to users like VQuakr and Mr Swordfish. I can tell you've got a lot of strong feelings on this subject, User Rollinginhisgrave, which is why I'd like to have you regularly editing the page. But you don't seem to understand the basic principles on which Wikipedia operates, and I'm concerned that you won't be able to edit constructively if you don't know how Wikipedia's policies are generally understood and enforced.

For example, if you believe that a certain class of misconceptions have been improperly excluded from this page, the decision not to include that material is not OR per WP:VNOT, particularly:

Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion

While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.

If you are concerned that a certain class of common misconceptions are not being given their due weight on this page, that would be an issue of WP:NPOV, particularly WP:DUE. If you think that there are common misconceptions that should be included in this article, but which are not currently included, you are quite free to include them and give them their due weight. I encourage it, in fact. Most of your examples of problems are from discussions that took place around 2012. If you feel like revisiting whether some of those misconceptions should or should not be included by bringing them up on the talk page, please feel free to do that, also.

Stop misusing WP:Policies. Read them through carefully before you bring them up. You're not going to convince anyone of anything if you don't understand what WP:OR is. Not everything you dislike is OR. Joe (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

@JoePhin: I would like to apologise for the WP:BLUE allegation. Some words tripped me up. In your example of 29 fingers being a common misconception, the "common" frame of reference was obviously intended to imply a population like America. In saying it's obviously not common, you're referring to it obviously not being common to America. This isn't BLUE. When people say something is obviously not common on this page usually, (i.e. it's a common misconception among doctors that xyz), they are saying something being common among a subgroup isn't common among what they understand common as (the world, America, ethnic group etc). I read your comment as the latter when it was the former and applied it to WP:BLUE. I am sorry.

I'll step it back before discussing NPOV. When we say something is common, we are implying it is common to something. Something cannot just be a "common" belief, it must be "common among" a group. We don't specify the group we are saying things are common among, nor is it implied. If it was implied we wouldn't have challenges to the article around "is it common if something is rare in the world." Yet we are trying to imply there is a group common is being defined in relation to. There just isn't. If you grammatically break it down, this is a article called "list of common misconceptions among X". The second meaning that you could take from the title is that the article is a list of misconceptions common to any group. There is a consensus it is not that. It is a different meaning to the article, just as two articles called "list of wet politicians" would be different if wet was defined in one as a soft conservative and in the other as covered in water. If it was implied that it was common to any group, we wouldn't be disqualifying whole groups (i.e. academics) on the grounds of beliefs held by them not being common enough to constitute a common belief (to X group).

I cannot think of a single list article that has variable x in the name for editors to vibe out. List of fatal bear attacks in Northern America certainly doesn't fit it. Imagine you broke down the title when assessing if a new entry should come in. Is it a misconception? Is it common among group X? Asking if various groups which constitute group X are under or overrepresented is meaningless without a definition of X, and yet this is what is imply the issue is under your NPOV comments. Yes, verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, but the issue is you can't verify anything without understanding whether it meets the title's definition, which has an undefined variable in it. It's like having an article "list of most". Most what? What is the X? If editors reach a consensus on what X is, implied in a very meaningful and existential sense by the word most, this is not verifiable, and is confusing, meaningless OR.

I'm sorry if this seems hot, and I am especially sorry if it is too hot that you feel attacked. I really don't mean to attack you, I genuinely like you and appreciate you for taking the time to undergo this conversation. I would caution as well this isn't WP:IDON'TLIKEIT. I've followed and edited this page for 6 years now. For the first five I believed it encyclopedic, and I still think it's really interesting. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:01, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, if we use the broadest possible interpretation of the word common, then literally nothing that uniquely occurs on Earth is common. If I went through and randomly sampled cubic meters of here and there and everywhere all throughout the universe for a million years, taking one sample every second, I would discover that the broader universe is composed of 0.0000000% common woodshrikes, and in a cosmic sense, common woodshrikes are actually extremely uncommon, since they only occur on Earth and nowhere else. That doesn't mean we should try to get the common woodshrike page deleted, because the title is misleading, or try to get the page name changed to "the actually extremely uncommon woodsrike"

For the purposes of this page, and for the purposes of the common woodshrike page, and for the purpose of every page that isn't dealing with issues of cosmology, we are not using the broadest possible interpretation of the word common, we are using the plain English interpretation of the word common for the English Wikipedia. And in plain English, common woodshrikes are allowed to be called common, as are many misconceptions. If we have RS stating that something is a common misconception, and the RS is using the word common in the same context that the word would be used by anyone using plain English to describe things that occur in day-to-day human life, (as in "a toaster is a common household appliance" or "black haired women are common" or "you'll commonly see prairie dogs when walking down this trail," etc.) if the RS is using the word common in that sense, then it's perfectly applicable to this page, and generally acceptable for inclusion here. That's not a problem, it's a feature. If we limited ourselves to discussing only phenomena that occur on a truly cosmically common scale, then we wouldn't be able to discuss anything on this page, and that would make the page worse, not better. When people read a page about common misconceptions, they aren't looking for misconceptions that are common throughout all of space and in all possible contexts.

Also, please don't worry, I don't feel the least bit attacked. I'm enjoying our conversation, even though we disagree. :P Joe (talk) 00:19, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

On plain readings; Common is being defined in relation to X. Editors have interpreted X as different, contradictory things according to their plain English readings. There isn't a plain English reading of what common implies, that is the problem. The sense you say it's acceptable for sources to use "common" in to get included in the page includes the definitions of X that editors have identified as contradictory; your plain read isn't shared by many editors. It's crazy to have a list where an entry requirement is implied, but editors can't agree on what it is being implied from their plain English readings.

I think the woodshrike example has run its course as an analogy to this discussion, as it's not a list and we're discussing list inclusion criteria, and as I don't think you believe Wikipedia editors could reach a consensus on what context woodshrikes would need to be common within to be common independent of RS, and from this decide to challenge the "common" label in the article text. I tried to get a better analogy for you with an implied undefined variable, looking for lists of famous X, but they're all redirects. Could you find a different one? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 07:25, 25 October 2022 (UTC)

May I ask why you don't object to the use of the word common in, say, the common gull page, or the common cold page, when 'common' gulls and 'common' colds are objectively uncommon in a universal sense?

Also, when you say, "I don't think you believe Wikipedia editors could reach a consensus on what context woodshrikes would need to be common within to be common independent of RS" - I think I largely agree. That's why we use RS, and why we don't ever decide that something is common enough to be included without RS. Note how I emphasize the words "is common enough to be included" there, as opposed to "isn't common enough to be included". We might, in fact, decide that though an RS states something is a common misconception, that we won't include it for any of a number of procedural reasons. (Again, see WP:VNOT, "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted...")

That said, I'm generally in favor of adding caveats to the entries on this page, in cases where the RS specify that the misconception is common in a specific context, usually a national one. For example, if a misconception were particularly common in Mexico, and the RS explicated that, then I'd be all in favor of adding a little "such-and-such is a common misconception in Mexico" proviso to the entry. Joe (talk) 05:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with common in those pages since editors are purely using RS to make such claims of commonality. The issue I have is when editors have to make assertions of whether the common cold is common without such reference.

I really appreciate this distinction you're drawing here, identifying OR in inclusion when done without reference to RS, while not identifying OR in exclusion done without reference to RS. From how I understand this, you, citing the WP:VNOT quote, believe if a consensus is reached then exclusion can be justified. However, I think it's you would agree that this doesnt imply a free for all, allowing any consensuses on any issues and that such justifications could not be breaking key Wikipedia policies. WP:LSC explicitly warns against creating an original selection criteria, linking to WP:OR. The question then becomes whether excluding an entry is being done via OR as I am alleging. I think it is clear that it is, since it is creating an exclusion criteria based on an original, contested interpretation of what the X in "list of common misconceptions among X" is, and that this is being done without reference to RS stating what is common.

I think your support for caveats among nations is understandable, but I wonder what would be your thoughts on caveats based on articles such as 11 Common Shabbat Myths and Misconceptions if done by a more RS. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 08:22, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

Alright, it has become clear to me what the problem here is.

User Rollinginhisgrave, you have badly, badly, conflated the concepts of 'inclusion' and 'exclusion.' Please read the Selection criteria section of the WP:SAL page and pay particular attention to the use of the words 'inclusion' and 'exclusion.' You may notice, that exclusion is not mentioned anywhere.

It is important that some Wikipedia lists have a set of inclusion criteria, so that not just anything can be included. As I'm sure you're aware, this page has a (rather stringent) set of inclusion criteria that anyone who tries to edit the page will see in a drop-down menu.

If you are concerned that this page does not have well-defined inclusion criteria, don't be, we do.

If you are concerned, instead, about exclusion criteria, then that has nothing to do with WP:LSC, and also, we don't have exclusion criteria. As you are now aware, "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted" per WP:VNOT. Any consensus to exclude any material is technically acceptable on this page. In practice however, as mentioned above at length, in +95% of cases, the only reasons we exclude material that otherwise meets the inclusion criteria is 1) because we interpret statements to have a meaningful context that indicates the literal words 'common misconception' are not being used in a plain English sense per WP:NOTOR's Accurately contextualizing quotations section, or 2) because the RS disagree on what is and isn't a misconception, and we try to avoid material that might reasonably be disputed. Neither of these is OR, nor would any other consensus to exclude something on this page, even with and despite RS to the effect that it is a common misconception, per WP:ONUS

Please see also, from WP:LSC, "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of unusual things or terrorist incidents), it is especially important that inclusion be based on reliable sources given with inline citations for each item." We only include items on this list for which there are RS stating that the item is a common misconception, or some synonym.

There are all kinds of procedural reasons why we might exclude this or that or the other thing, but the only reason we include anything is because it meets the page's inclusion criteria (e.g. it has RS stating that it is a common misconception, it is featured on another page, the misconception is current and not outdated).

When the editors on this page come to a consensus not to include a particular item, we are not, as you say "creating an exclusion criteria". Not all verifiable content must be included, per WP:ONUS

If there are any items that you think are being inappropriately excluded from the page for some reason, please feel free to bring them up. I'm not sure if you're aware, but about 6/8 of the examples you brought up in your 'Defining misconception' subsection were already included on this page after being revisited sometime between 2011 and now. I already said it, but all these 'problems' you're bringing up are not problems at all. I'm afraid you're the third most tremendous WikiLawyer I've ever run into, User Rollinginhisgrave. Well, eh, come to think of it, maybe you're only the fourth, close contest though. Joe (talk) 11:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

My reading of selection criteria is it is a criteria of things to be included in the article, which obviously involves stating or implying what not to include. An example: criteria 4, as an inclusion criteria stating only current misconceptions can come in the page, excludes ancient/obsolete misconceptions. This is all I mean by exclusion. Applied to this case: the question is what the X is in "list of common misconceptions among X." This is controversial, and is not implied. In determining what X means, and including entries to the page which are held by X, we are necessarily excluding entries that are held by groups other than X. You can paint this is an inclusion criteria (if you focus on the inclusion of beliefs held by X), or an exclusion criteria (if you focus on the exclusion of beliefs held by groups other than X). It is two sides of the same coin, and it is all regulated by WP:LSC. In practice, we have an inclusion criteria that misconceptions must be held by the world, countries and some small groups, as opposed to those held by scientists and some small groups (let's call this criteria 5). You can see this in play if we tried to include the misconception on the page Ammonium acetate despite the fact that criteria 1-4 are met. That this is the inclusion criteria, determined by OR, is the issue. This is a normal and reasonable reading of selection criteria. Now that I have framed it as an inclusion criteria, and not an exclusion criteria, do you believe that WP:LSC is applicable?

If you understand that by specifying inclusion, you are necessarily implying exclusion (again, criteria 4 is literally this) reading the phrase "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed" (I am claiming criteria 5 is subjective right now) actually highlights the need for selection to be based on RS, which is the argument I am making.

I hope you can consider that this is not Wikilawyering and is instead a reasonable read of the policy, and reflects how it is applied to this very page. It is also not a conflation of inclusion and exclusion. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 12:57, 27 October 2022 (UTC)

"My reading of selection criteria is it is a criteria of things to be included in the article, which obviously involves stating or implying what not to include."

No, User Rollinginhisgrave, you've made a very reasonable leap, but in this case, it's not correct. It is necessary, but not sufficient, that some item meet the inclusion criteria for it to be included on this page. Think about it like this:

Level 1) Obviously, no item is included in the article if no one adds it.

Level 2) If someone adds something in this article, and it does not meet the inclusion criteria, (say, for example, someone added a paragraph about how Laurell K. Hamilton is polyamorous, and it isn't even written or presented as a misconception) we will not include it based on the inclusion criteria requiring items to be stated to be misconceptions in their RS and on their corresponding pages.

Level 3) Someone adds something that meets all the inclusion criteria, technically at least, but which some editors take issue with. Maybe they don't think it improves the page, maybe they think the RS isn't really saying that the item is a common misconception (in the same way that, in context, Dr. Ibrahim was not really saying that all American cats descend from a polydactyl ancestor), etc., etc., there are dozens of procedural reasons on Wikipedia why material might not be included, but whatever that reason is, the editors come to a consensus to exclude the item despite the fact that it meets the letter of the inclusion criteria. In all of these cases, WP:VNOT's "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." applies.

Level 4) Someone adds something to the article and it either isn't disputed at all, or, after it is disputed, the editors come to a consensus to include it.

If I'm understanding you, you're thinking that anything that passes Level 2 (that is, anything that meets the inclusion criteria) must be included, and to not include it is to engage in OR. I'm telling you, as someone who has a modest understanding of WP:Policy, that this is not so. Things still must pass WP:ONUS (in this case, Level 3) in order to be included, and the exclusion of material for which there is a consensus 'not to include' is perfectly good, and standard, on all Wikipedia pages, including this one.

What I've dubbed 'Level 2' and 'Level 3' are not two sides of the same coin, they are steps that must both be met in order for something to be included. If something meets the inclusion criteria, that does not mean it must be included.

If there is material that meets all the inclusion criteria, but the editors broadly agree that including it worsens the article, we may, quite legitimately, not include it. Consensus trumps almost everything else on Wikipedia. We need consensus to include things on all Wikipedia pages. If we didn't have consensus, we wouldn't have Wikipedia.

If this seems unfair to you somehow, I again encourage you to try to form a new consensus on whatever misconceptions you feel have not been given their due weight on this page. In my estimation, you would be likely to find success. If the editors erred somehow a decade ago, it would be good for us to correct that. Joe (talk) 09:19, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

@JoePhin: You misunderstand my point, which, having re-read what I wrote, is very understandable.

"It is necessary, but not sufficient, that some item meet the inclusion criteria for it to be included on this page." I recognise this and agree with you 100% on it. "If I'm understanding you, you're thinking that anything that passes Level 2 (that is, anything that meets the inclusion criteria) must be included, and to not include it [in any case] is to engage in OR." This is thankfully not my position, you are correct to think such a position would be absurd.

If I were to step how I understand the issue, my thinking runs as follows.

1) We don't always include entries in the article that meet the inclusion criteria.

2a) Such exclusions often happen when people say a misconception being common among Y group isn't common enough to be considered a "common misconception."

2b) Something cannot just be a "common misconception" as common can only be defined in reference to something, and the article is actually "list of common misconceptions among X".

2c) stepping out 2a), people are in effect making an exclusion of entries due to misconceptions among Y not being equivalent to misconceptions common among X.

3) defining X as only some groups is OR, as X is not implied via any single plain reading as seen in disagreements over what it means to be common.

4) these exclusions have panned out in a way that we in essence include entries that meet what I call membership criteria 5: "misconceptions must be held by the world, countries and some small groups, as opposed to those held by scientists and some small groups"

5) I think since the exclusions are done with reference to an implicit membership criteria (criteria 5), such a criteria has to meet WP:LISTCRITERIA, which says to avoid "original or arbitrary criteria", linking to WP:OR, which this criteria fails per 3)

6a) You question whether such exclusions should be better understood as permitted via WP:VNOT, which allows exclusions when editors reach a consensus to exclude an item, rather than WP:LISTCRITERIA, which as outlined in 5), doesn't allow some exclusions (including criteria 5).

6b) I think it's better to understand such exclusions (done under criteria 5) as an implicit membership criteria as, with a page called "list of common misconceptions among X", assessing if a misconception is common among X is of the highest importance in assessing entry and requires explicit clarification when there is confusion over what it is.

6c) You (from how I've read it) have challenged the idea that WP:LISTCRITERIA regulates excluding entries from list articles, rather, it regulates what is included, and exclusions of entries aren't within the domain of membership criterias.

6d) I think it's logically clear that by creating a criteria of what is included, you are therefore making a criteria of what is excluded. i.e. criteria 4, in making an inclusion criteria for current misconceptions, creates an exclusion criteria for non-current misconceptions. If WP:LISTCRITERIA applies to the formulation of including current misconceptions, it necessarily applies to the formulation of excluding non-current misconceptions, since this is just rewording the same criteria (this is the two sides of the same coin, not levels 2 & 3)

"If there is material that meets all the inclusion criteria, but the editors broadly agree that including it worsens the article, we may, quite legitimately, not include it." You are right, although this is limited by such consensus being an inclusion criteria, which this effectively is (6b), as such consensus is regulated by WP:LISTCRITERIA, which says to avoid original or arbitrary criteria, which criteria 5 is (5).

I hope the pretentiousness of a numbered list is outweighed by you being able to point out where you think my reasoning is off. I would love for you to give a list before you respond (i.e. 4, 6c) of the points you think I'm wrong at. Take your time, I appreciate you taking the time to have the convo. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 20:28, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Gravity in space

Someone recently tried to remove the 'weightlessness in space' entry, claiming that it was "just a semantic dispute". I've reverted the removal. The RS make it clear that there is a widespread belief that, as one rises above the surface of the Earth, gravity drops to zero, and that the reason astronauts experience weightlessness is because they are too far away from the Earth to feel its gravitational pull.

This interpretation is 'sort-of-true' at great distances (the gravitational effect of the Earth on objects in the Kuiper belt is so tiny that it's almost zero) but it is not true for anything closer to the Earth than the moon, or even satellites that orbit the Earth beyond the orbit of the moon. As mentioned in the entry, the Earth's gravity is still nearly 90% as strong at the orbital elevation of the International Space Station as at the surface, meaning that if you were holding onto a space-elevator ladder that extended into the exosphere at the level the ISS orbits at, holding onto the ladder, you would weigh about 90% of your weight on the surface of the Earth.

The actual reason why astronauts in Earth's orbit experience weightlessness is because they are in free-fall; they're weightless for the same reason one would be weightless if one fell off a roof twenty feet above the surface of the Earth, or while riding the Vomit Comet. If something is in orbit around the Earth (or any other body) that means it is within the gravitational sphere of influence of that body, and consequently, not in zero gravity.

I agree in some sense that this misconception is "semantic" because literally all misconceptions capable of being written down are semantic by definition, but it is clear that this is not just an instance where some pair of words or phrases with different meanings are being used as if they are synonymous. The RS make it clear that people commonly and genuinely believe one is 'free' of the Earth's gravity when they get into space, and they are wrong in that belief. Joe (talk) 05:07, 29 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm sitting here in my chair on Earth. I'm experiencing a 1-g force as long as I sit still.

If I got in my car and stomped on the accelerator or took a curve at speed I might experience a 2-g force.

If I flew an advanced fighter jet I might pull a 4-g force (or more if didn't pass out).

If I went aboard the International space station, I would experience a zero-g force.

So, when this entry starts out with Spacecraft are never in "zero-gravity" or "zero-g". that sounds at odds with the simple facts of how g-force or orbital weightlessness works.

The way you've described the situation above sounds correct. Gravity is still a significant force in orbit, it doesn't just disappear. If some people think gravity itself is absent for orbiting astronauts because they are far enough from Earth then, yes, this is a misconception, and if sufficiently people do then it qualifies as common. But we need to be careful about how we present it lest casual readers come away with "zero-g is not a thing".

I'll take a stab at rewriting the entry to make sure that were not making false or misleading statements. BTW, the topic article Weightlessness is a hot mess - I'll be looking into rewriting some of it in coming weeks. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:23, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

You'd be correct - if we lived in a mathematically ideal universe where cows were spheres, and if the Earth were the only celestial body in the universe, and if space were a perfect vacuum, and if the Earth and the ISS were both 1-dimensional points, and so on, and so on - but we don't live in an idealized mathematical scenario, alas this is meatworld, so no, if one actually went aboard the International space station, one would not "experience a zero-g force". Understandable that you'd think you might, though, given the commonness of this misconception, and the unfortunate tendancy of every god-damned media outlet to constantly misuse the terms zero-gravity and zero-g, to the chagrin of scientists and science communicators the world over. Joe (talk) 07:48, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

I assume you are talking about micro-gravity, i.e. the gravitational force from the moon and the sun and other nearby objects like planets. Yes, there is still some residual gravity from those sources. But it's called "micro gravity" for a reason: it's about one-millionth the magnitude of what's found on Earth. So what one experiences on the ISS is a gravitational field so negligible that it can only be detected by the most sensitive instruments.

Any normal person in casual conversation would say that is zero-g and would not be wrong. And it's exactly this kind on nit-pickery shit that gives this article a bad name. I'll accept that thinking that "astronauts feel weightlessness because they are so far from the Earth that gravity disappears" is a misconception. Saying zero-g is a myth due to the 1/1,000,000th of residual gravity is hair-splitting. Let's take that out of the entry. I'd like to hear the opinions from other editors. Thanks.

BTW, if "every god-damned media outlet" is saying it, perhaps we should reflect what is stated by those reliable sources?

' Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:29, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Mr Swordfish, dozens of (otherwise reputable) media outlets have reported that hippos have pink milk, including National Geographic. Does that mean that Wikipedia should report that hippos do have pink milk, even though it is not true? Naturally-pink hippo milk is not a thing that occurs anywhere in our universe. Likewise, dozens of (otherwise reputable) media outlets have reported that 'zero gravity' is a thing, yet zero gravity is not a thing that occurs anywhere in our universe. The fact that lots of media outlets repeat a common misconception does not make it true, and sources reporting factually inaccurate information are not reliable, by definition. So, to answer your question: no, Wikipedia should not perpetuate common misconceptions just because they are commonly perpetuated in other media. I should think this would be obvious. Words like pink and zero don't just mean whatever anyone wants, nor does their widespread misuse change their meanings. Joe (talk) 06:57, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree micro-g should be taken out. Anderjef (talk) 15:21, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

One of the cited sources has this to say:

The conceptual link between free fall, orbital motion, and weightlessness is difficult to establish, especially when most students have already satisfied themselves that they understand: gravity doesn't reach that far."

and

There is clear but subtle difference between floating in orbital free fall and being free of gravitational fields.

I don't think this page should be in the business of presenting concepts that are "difficult to establish" or litigate over "clear but subtle" differences. We have a clearly established misconception that "gravity does not reach that far". I think we can leave the entry at that. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:24, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

No, Mr Swordfish, you mistake me. I am absolutely not talking about 'micro-gravity' - a term that is almost as misleading in is general usage as zero-gravity. Zero-g refers to g-forces, generally, not just gravitational forces. When you get into a car and experience two 'g's, you aren't under double gravity, you are experiencing twice as much g-force. I am talking about how one does not, in fact, experience zero-g (g, being the gravitational force equivalent, not gravity) on the ISS. Indeed, when in space, one is never in a zero-gravity or a zero-g environment, and those are two different things. Unfortunately, the terminology about this is so misused on such a regular basis, I'm having to go back and check to make sure I'm not making any misleading statements. I'm sorry if I was unclear.

Oh, P.S., thank you for your lovely 'Shouting Fire in a Crowded Theater' entry, Mr Swordfish - no doubt it's one of the great misconceptions of all time, and frankly, I'm amazed we didn't already have it on the page. Good stuff. Joe (talk) 08:30, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

I am perplexed as to why people would think satellites and the like operate completely free of gravity when it is understood that the tides are caused by the Moon. To me, it would seem the misconception would be with zero-G (not zero-g), or rather having escaped most of Earth's gravity. Anderjef (talk) 12:50, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Me too. I have to say I've never heard of anyone saying that astronauts are weightless because gravity doesn't reach that far. Being familiar with the inverse square law, it's obvious to me that gravity extends indefinitely, it just becomes smaller the farther you go. But apparently many people do have this incorrect notion, as established by one of our cited sources. Go figure. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:56, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

If people were incapable of holding self-contradictory beliefs, this list would be a lot shorter. Joe (talk) 09:12, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Ok. I misunderstood you. Let me try again.

Any force can be expressed in units of g-force by dividing by the mass since g-force is just force per unit mass. So a true zero-g environment would be one where the object(s) inside it feel no forces. Of course, this doesn't exist anywhere in the universe. Is this the basis for a misconception? I'd need to see more reliable sources establishing it. As the entry now stands, it deals with two distinct conceptions, one of which is clearly a common misconception. If we're going to keep the zero-g part it should be another entry.

Meanwhile, one of the topic articles has this to say:

Objects allowed to free-fall in an inertial trajectory under the influence of gravitation only feel no g-force, a condition known as weightlessness. This is also termed "zero-g", although the more correct term is "zero g-force". This is demonstrated by the zero g-force conditions inside an elevator falling freely toward the Earth's center (in vacuum), or (to good approximation) conditions inside a spacecraft in Earth orbit. These are examples of coordinate acceleration (a change in velocity) without a sensation of weight.

This seems to contradict the entry here, unless we're willing to declare as a misconception something that is a "good approximation". Perhaps you are right and the topic article is wrong. It would need to be fixed there first to reconcile the contradiction. Meanwhile it seems appropriate to remove the zero-g material pending that resolution. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:51, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Spiral staircases

As stated in this edit summary (that was actually me, sorry for IP-editing), Hohenzollern Castle as it stands today is largely a 19th-century reconstruction, so the staircase pictured is very likely from that time, and not necessarily based on the remains of a medieval predecessor. A different picture is probably in order. MeAmME (talk) 12:23, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

All or most rivers flow south

Here's my proposed text:

It is not true that all or most rivers flow from north to south. Rivers in fact flow downhill in response to gravity, whatever direction that may be. Sometimes downhill is from north to south, but equally it can be from south to north, and is often a complex meandering path through all directions of the compass. Three of the ten longest rivers in the world—the Nile, Yenisei, and Ob—flow north, as do other major rivers such as the Lena, Rhine, Mackenzie, and Nelson. Also, the Amazon River, the world's largest river in terms of annual flow volume, flows west to east.

- Montréalais (talk) 16:53, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Four of the ten largest rivers (by drainage area) flow north. The Lena is the fourth in addition to the Nile, Yenisei, and Ob .

Is this mentioned in a topic article somewhere? Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:53, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

The way I heard it is "very few rivers flow north". Folks along the New River in West Virginia seem to be very impressed with the "rarity" of their north-flowing river. Of course, "what I've heard" is not sufficient sourcing, but may help in pinning down the actual misconception.

BTW, of the ten largest rivers in the world (by drainage area) only two flow south, Mississippi-Missouri and Rio de la Plata. Lena, Ob, Yenisei, and Nile flow north. Amazon and Amur flow east. Congo flows west. Niger flows north, then east, then south. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:54, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

I had never heard this misconception before, but it does seem pretty common -- at least it is very often debunked.

I don't think the text needs to be that long, though. I would stick with something short, like:

It is not true that most rivers flow from north to south. Rivers flow in all compass directions, often changing direction along their course, flowing downhill in response to gravity.

The parent article (which is what?) can have more details on directions of flow. --Macrakis (talk) 14:35, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I like this writing just fine. We should add it to the River page, under the 'Direction' sub-sub-section, under the 'Characteristics' section, under the 'Streamflow' section, where this same RS is already being used. I'd say add your text there more or less verbatim, Macrakis, it looks like it would fit perfectly, and then would you please add it as an entry here? I'll do it later if you don't feel like it. Joe (talk) 22:29, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

The misconception appears to be whether all rivers flow south(ward—being terminating at least a little south of the source). (I wonder how this is common when the Nile clearly flows north...) If anything, it seems most rivers do flow southward, although I'm not sure an indication of the direction most flow can be made as "...the exact number of the northward-flowing rivers has not been established", but perhaps there are estimates somewhere.

Btw, in looking this up, St. Johns River and the Nile being the only northward-flowing rivers is said to be a common misconception. Anderjef (talk) 16:57, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

References

gross income

"An increase in gross income will never reduce one's post-tax earnings (net income) due to putting one in a higher tax bracket."

This is false in Argentina, for example if you are in the G category of monotributo, you can earn up to $3,416,526.83 yearly, and pay $9,216.76 per month in taxes, and if you're in the H category, you can earn up to $4,229,985.60 and pay $16,114.67 monthly, this means that if you earned $3,416,526, you would end up with a yearly net income of $3,305,924.88, and if you earned $3,416,527 you would end up with $3,223,150.96, a $82,773.92 difference.

https://www.afip.gob.ar/monotributo/categorias.asp

The difference becomes even more evident when one reaches monotributo's max earnings allowed, and has to start paying as a responsable inscripto. Uwsi (talk) 17:39, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

We have a joke for occasions like this one in Russia: "Isklyuchenie tol'ko podtverzhdaet pravilo", literally "the exeption [somehow] only confirms the rule": this is English area of Wikipedia; it's neither Portugese nor Spanish. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 11:10, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

WP:BIAS. Uwsi (talk) 19:59, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

reflist q

I get an error at the bottom of the page stating that there isn't any marker "<references group="q"/>", I found at the end of the page only the {{reflist|group=q}}, should it be removed or is there another problem? Martinligabue (talk) 10:59, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Resolved. Thanks for bringing it up. Notes belonging to the group were below the {{reflist|group=q}} tag, hence the error. Anderjef (talk) 15:25, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

The Iodine Myth

Iodine is often characterised by its proclivity to immediately transition from a solid to a gas at room temperature and more dramatically with minor heating, resulting in it often being used as an example of the sublimation phase transition. A misconception which allegedly often arises from this property is that iodine is incapable of melting under standard atmospheric pressure, and can only sublimate. Chemistry YouTuber Nile Red has covered this misconception in a 2017 video, pointing to several sources in the process which both propagate this myth and disprove it. I'm not sure if this video alone, or the video accompanied by the sources it points to, would be sufficient as a reference for including this on the page (there are still other sources which discuss it, such as this paper) but a brief skimming over the four criteria seem to qualify it for inclusion. Is there anything else that should be mentioned on this topic before adding it to the page or concluding that it should not be? - HurricaneAmputee (talk) 11:17, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

The incorrect statement that Iodine does not melt, only sublimates is treated as a "misconception" in the Iodine article. This source [7]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0187893X17301490 says:

...the notion that upon heating iodine only sublimes, but does not melt is present in many chemistry textbooks, teachers lectures and, therefore, in students minds and may be considered as one of the widespread misconceptions in chemistry teaching.

I'm not sure that this is enough to warrant inclusion as a common misconception. It's certainly a misconception, I'm just not sure how common it is. Were we to include it I'd suggest the following language:

Iodine melts to form a deep violet liquid at 114 °C (237 °F). Since it is also commonly used to demonstrate sublimation directly from solid to gas, it is sometimes claimed that it does not melt in atmospheric pressure.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:04, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

This is not dispositive, but I've asked some of my friends who have Phd's in chemistry and they've never heard of it. So my sense is that this misconception is not sufficiently common to include in the article. This is a judgment call and subject to varying opinions. My opinion is to leave it out. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:04, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Preferentially

"Predominantly" is fine, but "preferentially" does not necessarily imply intention. In the OED, definition 2 is "Science. With a greater likelihood; to a greater extent or degree.", example: "After infection, the virus binds preferentially to T4 lymphocytes." (2000).

As for St. Lawrence vs. Lena, I was trying to use well-known, major examples (St. John's in Florida is neither) from a variety of continents, and it seems reasonable to consider northeast as a kind of north. Actually, the point of the entry is that south-to-north is not predominant, so examples of east- and west-flowing rivers would also work. --Macrakis (talk) 18:06, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I've been trying to nail this entry down with a bit of googling, but so far the sources I've found are not so great. I'm still not sure what the best way to state the misconception is, and given the low quality of the sources I've found I'm not sure if we'll find out.

Thought.co is a source that gets a "no consensus" rating at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources

Worldatlas.com is not rated at all.

This article [8]https://www.newgeography.com/content/001426-the-nile-flows-north makes for an interesting read, but not sure of its reliability. It indicates that the misconception is either that "rivers can't flow north" or that "The Nile and LOCAL_RIVER_X are the only two rivers in the world that flow north. Examples of LOCAL_RIVER_X are the Wallkill River in New Jersey and the Kishwaukee River in Illinois.

This second version is expanded in this article {https://journals.flvc.org/flgeog/article/view/76274] which states:

...the myth asserts that a certain river--usually in the US--is one of the few rivers in the world running north. The authors of this version are still not sure as to how many rivers flow north, but they are sure that the number must not be very large. It is highly likely that those who believe in the above erroneous statements also believe that rivers cannot and should not flow north.

The author gives the following examples of rivers that are asserted to be "one of the few" or "only, other than the Nile" that flow north

1. The Fox River is a river in eastern and central Wisconsin.

2. The Genesee River in the state of New York

3. The New River in North Carolina

4. The Red River of the North in North Dakota

5. The Saint Johns River in Florida

Not sure how reliable a source "The Florida Geographer" is, but it makes for an interesting read. It would be nice to get some better sources for this entry.

To address the "predominantly" vs "preferentially" issue, you make a good point, but I think the entry reads better with "predominantly".

The St Lawrence is a good counterexample for "all rivers flow south", but perhaps not so good for "no rivers flow north" so it depends on how we word the misconception, and I'm still unsure about that.

I think the entry is ok as it is, but could use some better sources and perhaps different language depending on what those better sources say. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 19:00, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Here's a nice catalog of misconceptions, including this one: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Sourcebook_for_Teaching_Science_Grad/RsZNDwAAQBAJ?gbpv=1&pg=PA142

Here's a mention of this misconception: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Better_Teaching_Through_Better_Measureme/LNFKAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=flow%20south

Here's one with a bit of discussion: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Assessment_and_Student_Success_in_a_Diff/dwxRBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Note that all three are about schoolchildren. It would be good to get sources that support the idea that adults believe this. --Macrakis (talk) 19:41, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Agree with the last point. I don't think we should be in the business of listing misconceptions that are believed by children but not common among adults.

BTW, I've seen several sources (but not very good ones) claim that "most" rivers flow south, but I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Rivers flow from the interior of the land mass towards the coast, which may be in any direction; the water travels downhill, so unless there's some underlying geological principle that I'm unaware of that causes downhill to be south more often than not the claim would seem to be baseless. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 20:53, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

I've found this quote or an excerpt thereof several places. It is attributed to NASA's Goddard Space Center website, but I can't find it there. Would be nice to find the whole article:

"So, there are indeed big rivers that flow to the north, as well as to the east, west and south. Why is it then that we think that few rivers flow to the north? Part of the answer is probably related to our geographic chauvinism and our lack of curiosity - we don’t know much or care about distant places. In the contiguous U.S., since there are no major rivers that flow northward, we’re convinced that this must be the way it is elsewhere. In Europe, where rivers such as the Rhine flow north from the Alps through densely populated areas of Germany, France and the Netherlands and then to the North Sea, the question of whether or not there are many north flowing rivers would be less likely to arise."

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:49, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

In North America, the major river that flows north, the Mackenzie, is in the unpopulated Arctic and unknown to many people. In fact, very few rivers in Canada flow south -- the Saguenay (which is not that big) is the exception.

In western Europe, rivers mostly flow outwards from the Alps to the surrounding seas. So there are major rivers flowing north (Rhine), south (Rhone), east (Danube), west (Loire), etc.

In east Asia, rivers flow outwards from the Himalaya and the Mongolian highlands, but again the north-flowing rivers are in the unpopulated Arctic (Ob, Lena). The four rivers coming from the Himalaya divide into east-flowing (Yellow, Yangtze, Ganges (though it turns south)), south-flowing (Mekong, Salween, Indus). Most of these take some dramatic turns, but the Brahmaputra is the most dramatic, flowing first east, then west, and then (for a smaller distance) south.

etc.

That is, the direction of major rivers is

• not really well-defined, since they often turn;
• determined by the overall shape of continents;
• sometimes not widely known because they flow through unpopulated areas.

--Macrakis (talk) 15:33, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Hinduism entry

I'm not seeing this treated in the topic article(s). Perhaps I'm missing it. Could someone locate it? Otherwise we need to remove the entry as failing the inclusion criteria. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:30, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Since I have not gotten a response I'm removing the entry for failing the inclusion criteria. If someone can answer the question above we can put it back. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:24, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Did you consider adding it? Benjamin (talk) 00:27, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not my area of expertise. If the editors at the topic article don't think it's important enough to treat as a common misconception then I'm going to defer to their judgment. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 02:42, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

public misunderstanding of housing markets

[9] "we find that only about 30–40% of respondents believe that additional supply would reduce prices" "public misunderstanding of housing markets" Benjamin (talk) 17:05, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

It's impossible to determine from an abstract of an economics journal article that this is a widespread misconception. We need details about the sample, such as the number of people in the sample, as well as how the questions were worded. "Nationally representative sample" doesn't mean the sample came from throughout the nation, only that the sample has approximately the same percentage of urban and suburban residents that is found in the entire population. The sample could include as few as 15 or 20 people. We also don't know if potentially confounding factors were controlled, such as age and gender. Single studies are inadequate for making generalizations to a larger population. We need review articles that examine the results of numerous studies. This limitation is make worse by the fact that, with just an abstract, we have very few details about the actual study. Sundayclose (talk) 00:24, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

@Benjaminikuta: I don't understand why you're quoting that article. What exactly do you want to add as a misconception? --Macrakis (talk) 01:28, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Habits

[10] We underestimate the impact of habit on behavior, as opposed to, say, moods. Benjamin (talk) 10:16, 22 October 2022 (UTC)

Not enough detail in a journal article abstract to reach any conclusions. Sundayclose (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

deceitful

[11] People incorrectly believe that rich people and people on parole are more likely to be deceitful. Benjamin (talk) 17:18, 24 October 2022 (UTC)

Not enough detail in a journal article abstract to reach any conclusions. Sundayclose (talk) 01:38, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

"Eskimo"

A dispute has arisen regarding the use of the term "Eskimo" on this page. Rather than edit war, let's try to resolve it via the talk page.

This article covers a wide range of topics, and no editor here should be expected to be well versed in all of them. So, we generally defer to the topic article, since it is presumed that the editors there are more familiar with the material than we are; in particular, the inclusion criteria requires that any entry be treated in the topic article.

Looking at the topic article Eskimo, it does say "Some people consider Eskimo offensive...", but apparently that is not enough to preclude using that term as the title. It is also clear that "Eskimo" and "Inuit" are not synonymous.

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other, but it seems to me that the proper venue for resolving this dispute is the talk page of Eskimo, not here. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:21, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

This is very unambiguous. There exists a common misconception that there are an unusual number of Eskimo words for snow. There does not exist a misconception that there are an unusual number of Inuit words for snow.

Furthermore, Wikipedia is not censored. It would not matter if Eskimo were the single most offensive exonym ever used in the history of humanity's utterances (it is not, but even if it were) it is still entirely appropriate to report on things which relate to that exonym in an encyclopedic fashion, which is what we are doing.

If it were a common misconception that the character of Jim from Huckleberry Finn was actually called "Nigger Jim" in the story, (I'm not saying that is necessarily a common misconception, but if it were), it would be entirely appropriate for us to report that,

"The phrase Nigger Jim actually does not appear anywhere in Mark Twain's writing."

and an attempt to sanitize the entry by re-writing it as,

"The phrase N-word Jim actually does not appear anywhere in Mark Twain's writing."

would not only be entirely inappropriate by the lights of WP:NOTCENSORED, but doing so would also rob the entry of it's actual meaning. It is the same with 'Eskimo words for snow.' This has already been discussed at length on the topic page, and they've already come to a clear consensus on this point there. Joe (talk) 02:03, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Are bananas radioactive?

In fact, they are. Does this article present a good candidate for inclusion here? Perhaps. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:07, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Interesting. I've never heard of this. Do people claim bananas are radioactive? Schwarbage (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Bananas are radioactive, but so are humans, as well as sundry other normal everyday objects found on planet Earth. If we've got RS indicating that people commonly believe the radioactivity of bananas is somehow dangerous, that would definitely make a good candidate for inclusion.

I just had a look through the Banana equivalent dose page and there are several RS there in the 'Criticism' section that seem pertinent.

I think this might relate to a broader misconception: 'All radiation is bad.' In fact, radiation is all around us (light and heat are types of electromagnetic radiation, for example); only high enough levels of radiation are actually deleterious to human health. It's also a fact that not all types of radiation are equally dangerous, though people commonly believe otherwise (I think the article Mr Swordfish linked goes into that a bit).

There may be further misconceptions about the radiation exposure associated with flying in an airplane or undergoing various medical scans related to this as well.

Lastly, this might all fall under the umbrella of a very prominent misconception about how poisons work; there are no fundamentally poisonous/toxic substances in the universe, a small enough dose of anything is perfectly safe (see the medical uses of Botulinum toxin, possibly the most toxic chemical known to science), and a large enough dose of water or oxygen will kill you (see Water intoxication and Oxygen toxicity). Fundamentally, the dose makes the poison. I'd be in favor of adding entries for all of these things, assuming they meet the inclusion criteria. I'm sure we've already got RS for most of them, and if some of these things aren't already explicitly mentioned as common misconceptions on their topic articles, then we should go ahead and add them there, and then include them here if the edits stick. I suspect some of these already meet all the inclusion criteria, and the only thing we need to do is confirm it before adding here. Good suggestion! Joe (talk) 12:14, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot to say here, and it may be difficult to pare it down to a two or three sentence entry.

1. bananas are radioactive, but not dangerously radioactive
2. they are more radioactive than most other commonly encountered, but not by that much
3. radioactivity and radiation are related but distinct concepts
4. not all radioactive things and not all radiation is dangerous
5. exposure to anything is safe if the dose is small enough and lethal if the dose is large enough

Maybe there's a good entry here, maybe not. I'm not coming up with obvious language, but perhaps someone else can. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:35, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

It might work better with 1 and 2 being one entry, and 4 and 5 being another (related) entry. Maybe something like:

• Although bananas contain naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, particularly potassium-40 (⁴⁰K), which emit ionizing radiation when undergoing radioactive decay, the levels of such radiation are far too low to induce radiation poisoning, and bananas are not a radiation hazard. It would not be physically possible to eat enough bananas to cause radiation poisoning, as the radiation dose from bananas is non-cumulative. (See also: Banana equivalent dose)
• Radiation is not always dangerous. Radiation is ubiquitous on Earth's surface, and humans are adapted to survive at normal Earth radiation levels. All substances are safely non-toxic at sufficiently low doses, even deadly poisons and high-energy forms of radiation, and all substances become toxic at sufficiently high doses, even water and oxygen. Indeed, the relationship between dose and toxicity is often non-linear, and many substances that are toxic at very high doses actually have positive health effects, or are biologically essential, at moderate or low doses. There is some evidence to suggest that this is true for ionizing radiation; normal levels of ionizing radiation may serve to stimulate and regulate the activity of DNA repair mechanisms.

And we could have another entry for 3, if someone felt it was warranted. Oh, please note, I didn't copy all the RS we already mentioned in the text above, but those would need to be appended onto these entries as appropriate. A few of them probably should be used for both entries. Joe (talk) 15:54, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Looking at the banana and [Banana equivalent dose]] articles I don't see this treated as a misconception. Your proposed text seems factually correct and well sourced, but the "misconception" part appears to be missing.

Likewise, I'm not seeing "all radiation is dangerous" treated as a common misconception in the topic articles. Again, the proposed text seems factually correct and well sourced, but the "misconception" part appears to be missing.

Minor quibble: Is radiation a "substance"? I'd substitute "things". Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:20, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Is radiation a substance? Well, it's definitely a real physical thing. Do substances have to be solid? Yes? No? Air is a substance, isn't it? Is it? Does it have to be made of quarks to be a substance, and bosons don't count? Does that mean particle radiation is a substance, but electromagnetic radiation isn't? Bugger me if I know.

I'll admit, I haven't checked exhaustively if either one is treated as a misconception elsewhere, though I don't think I saw it anywhere I glanced through, yet. It wouldn't surprise me if these are already mentioned as misconceptions somewhere on Wikipedia, but it wouldn't hurt to go ahead and add them to their respective topic pages, and if the edits stick on the topic pages, then we can add them here. I'll let you know here if I do any editing on that front.

As for whether radiation can be considered a substance... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Let's just call it a thing. Anything is a thing. Good idea. Joe (talk) 19:06, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Dear Mr. Swordfish, I've gone ahead and added these entries now that the edits on the Radiation page have stuck for a while. Thanks for making the suggestion in the first place. Joe (talk) 03:11, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

References

My opinion: "Bananas have enough potassium to make Geiger counter to cry a little" is a thesis to refer to. Not too much, not too little 81.89.66.133 (talk) 11:22, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Brain entries

There are two entries about brains that may be problematic. The one on how old a person must be before the brain "full matures" (whatever that means) and the one about hemispheric separation. I can't find either treated as a misconception in their topic articles, so it appears they fail the inclusion criteria. Perhaps someone could point out where the topic articles treat these as misconceptions.

My sense is that both are nuanced, disputed, and subject to ongoing research so neither belong here. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

(Putting aside my opinion on inclusion criteria #3...) Perhaps Neuroplasticity intro ("Neuroplasticity was once thought by neuroscientists to manifest only during childhood, but research in the latter half of the 20th century showed that many aspects of the brain can be altered (or are 'plastic') even through adulthood. However, the developing brain exhibits a higher degree of plasticity than the adult brain.") for the brain maturation, then Cerebral hemisphere#Hemisphere lateralization ("Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about certain functions ... being lateralized.... These claims are often inaccurate..." and "Function lateralization ... has since been called into question and largely been found to have a neuronal basis in both hemispheres.") and Lateralization of brain function#Popular psychology ("Some popularizations oversimplify the science about lateralization...") for the other. Anderjef (talk) 16:50, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

This is better than what is there now. I'll make those changes and we can continue to discuss whether the entries should remain per criteria #3. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 22:35, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

This article mentions it as a misconception.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8204782/Brain-only-fully-matures-in-middle-age-claims-neuroscientist.html

The misconception in particular is that the prefrontal cortex only fully matures at either 18, 21, or 25. None of these claims are true, as more modern research illustrates that it matures into someone's 30s or even 40s.

The problem is that this isn't a very commonly brought up misconception. It exists and is a misconception, but is not usually acknowledged as one publicly.

They are nuanced and disputed, but I believe it is more or less settled that brains do not finish maturing anywhere in the 20s and instead is somewhere past the 30s. I believe inclusion of this as a misconception (if this meets the criteria) would be helpful in clearing up confusion among a lot of people.

Perhaps to make it less problematic, I would add a part about scientists being unsure where the brain (or prefrontal cortex) is truly said to be finished maturing. It is quite troublesome since half of the researchers seem to continue on with it as if nothing happened, and the other half want to say development does not quite end at 21 or 25. Schwarbage (talk) 22:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Essentially, the reason it is such a problematic entry is because despite evidence to the contrary, there still exists a lot of old websites with the old research that says brains finish developing at 21 or 25, based on a misreading of the Giedd paper from 2004.

This is one of the few times I've seen someone tackle the myth in a major way.

https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/vncqpf/what_does_the_brain_finishes_developing_at_25/ Schwarbage (talk) 22:50, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks. Unfortunately, the UK Telegraph article is behind a paywall, and the Reddit thread, while interesting, is not suitable to use as a source here. And the fact remains that the topic article doesn't appear to mention it or treat it as a misconception.

This isn't my area of expertise, but what does it mean for the brain, or any other part of the body, to "mature" or finish "developing". I'm in my sixties. My knees, and everything else is "maturing". That process will likely continue until I'm in the ground. Is that different than the maturation or development process for younger people? Probably, but I'm unclear on the distinction, assuming there is one.

Neuroplasicity seems to be a well defined concept (or at least as well defined as possible in the life sciences) so it makes sense to couch the entry in those terms. But I'm still unconvinced that this is sufficiently settled to declare it a misconception. Maybe I just don't understand what "maturity" means from a biological perspective, especially as applied to the human brain. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 01:27, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Here's an archived version.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150320064853/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8204782/Brain-only-fully-matures-in-middle-age-claims-neuroscientist.html

Essentially, what 'maturity' means is the developmental of the prefrontal cortex. This is measured by synaptic pruning in that area of the brain, along with the thickness of gray matter. As we age, gray matter myelinates and prunes. The myth is that this stops at 21 or 25, when actually it is a process that lasts until death and is still occuring in a significant way in your late twenties and thirties. Schwarbage (talk) 05:33, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

If we're going to keep the entry on Brain Maturity, I'd suggest the following simplified version:

• The human brain does not reach "full maturity" at any particular age (e.g. 18, 21, or 25 years of age). Some mental abilities peak and begin to decline around high school graduation while others do not peak until much later (i.e. 40s or later).

I don't think we need to go into further detail here. I've kept all the refs, but we can probably trim most of them. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 23:16, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd say this works and is a little easier on the eyes. Thanks. Schwarbage (talk) 07:33, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Here's a better article.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8204782/Brain-only-fully-matures-in-middle-age-claims-neuroscientist.html Schwarbage (talk) 05:41, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

https://www.good()therapy.org/blog/change-is-a-choice-nurturing-neuroplasticity-in-your-life-0930154

This is a blog source, but apparently credible, but also blacklisted on Wikipedia for reasons unknown to me. Schwarbage (talk) 05:53, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I messed up. https://archive.ph/BoAic

Here's one that shows the full article instead of hiding behind it a paywall. Schwarbage (talk) 05:42, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

The UK Telegraph article states: "Scientists used to believe...". It doesn't say that members of the general public still believe this, or that the notion was ever prevalent among the general population. I think we'd need better sourcing that it is a current common misconception, along with a clear statement of what the misconception is. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 22:46, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Again, the onus is on those who support this entry to provide reliable sources for it. It's now doubled in size without the current problems being addressed. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

A recently added cite has this to say:

" Some abilities peak and begin to decline around high school graduation; some abilities plateau in early adulthood, beginning to decline in subjects’ 30s; and still others do not peak until subjects reach their 40s or later. These findings motivate a nuanced theory of maturation and age-related decline, in which multiple, dissociable factors differentially affect different domains of cognition."

Seems to me that this is sufficiently nuanced and subject to dispute that it shouldn't be included as a misconception. It's a gray area (no pun intended) and we should just steer clear of it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:49, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

References

Brain dev entry can definitely stay

https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html

Here is a recent article that effectively addresses the misconception at hand, I believe this justifies its continued inclusion. Schwarbage (talk) 09:49, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

holidays

"the popular misconception linking the holidays with suicide" [12] Benjamin (talk) 19:44, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Bubbles

[13] "echo chambers are much less widespread than is commonly assumed" Benjamin (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Lit cigarettes cannot ignite gasoline

I added this entry to the page yesterday as it is a common misconception, though it was taken down for not fulfilling the rules required for the page. I provided a scholarly article specifically about this that claimed it to be a misconception, as well as proof it is not true, and it is of course relatively modern. For those reasons, I. believe it should be included on the common misconceptions page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nachotacl (talk • contribs) 16:52, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Just to be sure everyone is informed, it fails inclusion criteria 1 and 3. Sundayclose (talk) 17:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The criteria are met when the following scholarly articles are used. However, they are failed if a wikipedia article is expected to support the claim, as suggested on my talkpage by Sundayclose. I believe this the key fact on which we disagree. The information is useful for many people in everyday life and is well sourced, which is why I believe it should be included.

Marcus, Howard A.; Geiman, Justin A. (November 1, 2014). "The Propensity of Lit Cigarettes to Ignite Gasoline Vapors". Fire Technology. 50 (6): 1391–1412. doi:10.1007/s10694-013-0380-3. ISSN 1572-8099.

Holleyhead, R. (1996). "Ignition of flammable gases and liquids by cigarettes: a review". Science & Justice. 4 (36): 257–266. doi:10.1016/S1355-0306(96)72611-4. ISSN 1355-0306. Nachotacl (talk) 19:59, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The disagreement is between your suggested entry and criteria 1 and 3. This is not a content dispute between editors. It's a dispute about whether this suggested entry can violate criteria 1 and 3. Sundayclose (talk) 00:50, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

More explicitly, @Nachotacl, you did not link to a topic article in your edit. Such a topic article should also explicitly mention this misconception. Neither Gasoline nor Cigarette mention this as a misconception. I notice that you recently added this common misconception to Filling station (under the section "Types of service#North America"?), but the topic of the misconception is clearly about the interaction or lack thereof of gasoline and cigarettes, not about the rules at filling stations, so I'm not convinced that this could be used as a topic article.

In fact, I'd argue that this entry ALSO doesn't meet criteria 2 and 4 with only these citations. While I agree that the citations support the claims that a lit cigarette cannot ignite gasoline or gasoline vapours and that the flame of a lighter can, I am not convinced (on a brief skim) that the citations support the claim that this is a widely-held current common misconception. In fact, the first article explicitly says the opposite in its introduction:

Despite the prevalence of smoking material fires overall, cigarettes are generally considered to be poor ignition sources for ignitable liquids.

and the closest the second gets in support of this is are statements to the effect that the cause of some fires has been attributed to cigarettes (but IMO that doesn't make it a widely-held current common misconception, especially if these attributions were mostly by fire investigators or similar, or mostly attributed prior to some year):

The cause of a fire has often been attributed to lighted cigarettes when, in fact, the combustible materials available in many cases cannot be set on fire by such an ignition source.

You're welcome to re-add this entry after you make sure that it satisfies all the inclusion criteria. Edderiofer (talk) 22:30, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I would have to agree and will continue to pursue this. I'll also remove that edit as you are right it is a bit out of place. Nachotacl (talk) 01:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Is the problem here that there is no WP article on gasoline fires started by cigarettes? Roger (talk) 02:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

There is no requirement that there should be an entire article on gasoline fires started by cigarettes. At issue here are two (possibly three) of the inclusion criteria. You can see the criteria prominently displayed by opening an edit window in the article. Sundayclose (talk) 02:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

There are two main problems here:

1. There is currently no suitable candidate for a topic article that mentions this misconception (criterion 3 and possibly criterion 1 depending on how you want to count it). As stated before, the only article that mentions this misconception is Filling station (which IMO is only tangentially relevant to the misconception), whereas really the topic article should be something more directly relevant, like Gasoline (perhaps under Gasoline#Flammability?) or Cigarette.

2. There is currently no suitable source that states that "cigarettes can ignite gasoline" is a common misconception (criterion 2b) or a current one (criterion 4); at least, none of the sources cited by Nachotacl support this.

I think both can be remedied with a bit of work. Edderiofer (talk) 11:45, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to retire this suggestion. Unless automod does it. I fully agree and do not believe it is appropriate for the page. Nachotacl (talk) 00:06, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

As Edderiofer said it's not a matter if this isn't appropriate, it's just that they made some stringent criteria - you pretty much should write about it twice afaict - also in article about gasoline itself, probably. I feel like it's a good addition to the list (all these cigars burning fuel in films should be debunked). Mithoron (talk) 01:02, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Exactly. My objection is not against the misconception being added to the article, but rather against the fact that it was originally added in a way that didn't meet the inclusion criteria. I think most people here would agree that if we could find some reliable sources that also showed it was a common current misconception, and if we would also edit Gasoline#Flammability to mention the misconception, then it would be perfectly fair game to add it to this article. Edderiofer (talk) 08:37, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

That sounds great but unfortunately the sources I provided don’t delve into the idea of it is is a common misconception. Probably could get it on the gasoline flammability page. Nachotacl (talk) 22:58, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed new section..

Should there be a section relating to misconceptions that originated in or were propagated by movies and other fiction media specifically (rather than by word of mouth or nonfiction media)? Blu Moon (talk) 20:56, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

That depends on whether there are enough of them to merit a separate section. If it's only one or two, that possibly could be integrated into other parts of the article. Do you have any examples with reliable sources that meet the four inclusion criteria? Sundayclose (talk) 22:40, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

knees

[14] "The knees absorb a lot of force when running, so many people think that running itself can accelerate the natural wear and tear on the joints. But in fact, the medical research tends to show that running has a protective effect against arthritis." "Other studies that measure knee cartilage suggest that running may stimulate cartilage to grow, not wear it out." Benjamin (talk) 13:40, 24 December 2022 (UTC)