Science

Randall Carlson, a geologist and frequent collaborator of Graham Hancock, combines the legitimate Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis with the unsubstantiated claim of a destroyed advanced civilisation. The comet hypothesis is the subject of serious scientific debate; the extension of that hypothesis to a lost civilisation has no archaeological support whatsoever.

A penny dropped from a tall skyscraper cannot kill a person on the ground below. Its light weight and flat, irregular shape mean air resistance brings it to a low terminal velocity within roughly the first 15 meters of its fall, and at that speed it would cause at most a minor sting rather than any dangerous injury.

The claim that anyone can develop absolute pitch at any age is false. Research points to a critical period that likely closes around age 6, after which acquisition becomes far harder, though studies from 2019 to 2025 show a small number of adults can achieve genuine absolute pitch through intensive training.

All bat species have functional eyes and the ability to see. Many insect-eating bats use echolocation to navigate and hunt in darkness, but this ability supplements vision rather than replacing it entirely. Fruit bats, in particular, have large, well-developed eyes and rely primarily on vision rather than echolocation.

The old dogma holding that the adult brain cannot generate new neurons has been substantially revised. Neurogenesis, the formation of new neurons, does occur in specific brain regions, particularly the hippocampus, throughout adulthood, though the exact rate and functional significance in humans remain actively debated. Most other brain regions retain only extremely limited regenerative capacity.

Bulls do not respond specifically to the color red. Cattle have dichromatic vision and cannot perceive red as a distinct color from certain other colors. What actually provokes a bull's charge is movement, not the color of the object being waved, and the red cape used in bullfighting serves a purpose for human spectators, not the animal.

Candace Owens consistently questions or denies the causal role of human activity in climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes with greater than 95% confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.

The Coriolis effect genuinely influences large-scale atmospheric and oceanic rotation, including the rotation direction of hurricanes, but it is far too weak to determine which direction water drains in an ordinary sink, bathtub, or toilet. Residual motion from filling the basin and small asymmetries in its shape and drain overwhelm the Coriolis force at that small scale.

Cardiologist Peter McCullough claims mRNA COVID-19 vaccines cause widespread harm and should be withdrawn from use. Independent fact-checkers and the studies he cites both show he systematically misrepresents the underlying research, while population-level data from dozens of countries show vaccination reduced hospitalization and death.

RFK Jr. publicly claimed in 2023 that COVID-19 was an 'ethnically targeted' bioweapon that disproportionately affects White and Black people, while Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people have genetic protection. Epidemiologists described the claim as biologically impossible. RFK Jr. denies it, but fact-checkers confirmed the original statement.

The claim that daddy longlegs are the most venomous spiders but cannot bite through human skin is false on both counts. The name refers to at least three different creatures, only one of which is a true spider, and neither harvestmen nor cellar spiders pose any medically significant venom risk to humans.

Human blood is always red, never blue, regardless of its oxygen level. Deoxygenated blood in veins is a darker red or maroon color, not blue. Veins appear bluish or greenish through the skin because of how different wavelengths of light penetrate and reflect off subcutaneous tissue, not because the blood inside them is actually blue.

Nearly all natural diamonds formed long before coal existed on Earth, in most cases more than a billion years earlier. Diamonds crystallize from inorganic carbon deep in Earth's mantle at depths of roughly 150 to 200 kilometers, under conditions entirely different from the compressed plant material near the surface that eventually becomes coal.

The classic tongue map showing sweet at the tip, bitter at the back, and salty and sour on the sides was based on a misinterpretation of a 19th-century German study. All five basic tastes can actually be detected across most areas of the tongue that contain taste buds.

Dogs are not colorblind in the sense of seeing only black, white, and shades of gray. They have dichromatic color vision, meaning they perceive blues and yellows, and see the world in a color range roughly comparable to a human with red-green color blindness rather than in true grayscale.

Albert Einstein did not fail mathematics in school. Historical records show he excelled at both mathematics and physics from an early age. The myth may have originated from a reversal of the Swiss grading scale used during part of his schooling, where the number '6' briefly went from representing the lowest possible score to the highest.

In science, 'theory' means a well-substantiated explanation supported by extensive evidence, not a guess. Evolution is supported by genetics, the fossil record, direct observation of speciation, and molecular biology, and is treated as fact-level science by every major scientific body.

Glass is an amorphous solid, not a liquid. The frequently cited observation that old medieval windows are thicker at the bottom reflects manufacturing techniques of the era, not glass slowly flowing under gravity. Physical calculations confirm that room-temperature glass cannot flow on any meaningful timescale, including over centuries.

Goldfish have memory spans measured in months, not seconds. Multiple controlled experiments have shown that goldfish can learn to navigate mazes, recognize handlers, respond to trained cues, and retain these learned behaviors for extended periods, directly contradicting the popular three-second memory myth.

Goldfish do not consciously regulate their body size to match the size of their tank. Small, cramped tank conditions cause stunted growth through biological stress, poor water quality, and restricted feeding, but when moved to larger environments with proper care, the fish generally resume more normal growth.

Graham Hancock claims that an advanced civilisation existed before the last Ice Age and was destroyed in a catastrophic comet impact. Professional archaeologists systematically reject his claims as pseudoarchaeology that ignores the full body of evidence, and the Society for American Archaeology demanded that Netflix classify Ancient Apocalypse as science fiction.

Hair and nails do not continue growing after death. The illusion of post-mortem growth is an optical effect caused by dehydration of the skin, which shrinks and retracts the surrounding soft tissue, making already-present hair and nails appear comparatively longer.

Humans did not evolve directly from any living species of monkey or ape. Humans and modern apes instead share common ancestors that no longer exist today. In the strict biological classification sense, however, humans are themselves apes, and more broadly, primates, a fact that often gets lost in casual debate over the claim.

Humans have far more than the traditional five senses. Beyond sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, the body detects balance, body position, internal states, pain, and temperature through distinct sensory systems. Depending on how senses are defined and counted, estimates range from about 9 to more than 30.

Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and podcaster, called ivermectin a 'near-perfect COVID prophylactic' and claimed that its suppression was the result of institutional corruption. BBC fact-checks and reviews of high-quality studies showed that ivermectin demonstrates no effectiveness against COVID-19 in rigorous trials.

Lemmings do not commit mass suicide. This myth was significantly amplified by a fraudulent 1958 Disney nature documentary in which filmmakers physically threw lemmings off a cliff to stage a dramatic migration scene. Actual lemming population dynamics involve well-documented boom-and-bust cycles, not intentional self-destruction.

Reptiles are not perpetually cold-bodied. Ectothermic animals such as lizards can bask in the sun to raise their body temperature to between roughly 35 and 42 degrees Celsius, a range that overlaps substantially with typical mammalian body temperatures. The real distinction between the two groups is the source of the heat used to regulate body temperature, not the actual temperature ultimately achieved.

Rupert Sheldrake claims that organisms inherit the collective memory of previous generations through a non-physical 'morphic field'. No peer-reviewed experiment has confirmed this; independent replications of Sheldrake's experiments consistently fail; and the theory has no physical mechanism.

The rule that one dog year equals seven human years is false. Dogs age much faster early in life and then more slowly, and the rate varies by size and breed, so the simple times-seven formula does not hold.

Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand. This ancient myth most likely originates from observations of ostriches tending ground-level nests, during which the birds lower their heads to turn buried eggs, an action that can look like head-burying from a distance but involves no actual burial of the head.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades promoting a link between vaccines and autism, based on the retracted and fraudulent Wakefield study. As US Secretary of Health in 2025, he ordered the CDC to change its website position stating that vaccines do not cause autism, a move condemned by health organisations worldwide.

Robert Malone credits himself with inventing mRNA vaccines and uses that claim to lend authority to a series of debunked assertions about COVID-19 vaccines. Scientists who worked alongside him describe his role as minor, and the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman, not Malone.

The safety a car provides during a thunderstorm comes from its metal body acting as a protective shell, not from its rubber tires acting as insulation. Lightning can travel more than a kilometer through open air, so a few centimeters of rubber offers no meaningful barrier against a discharge carrying hundreds of millions of volts.

Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet in 1998 claiming a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. The study was retracted due to fraud and data falsification, Wakefield lost his medical licence, and dozens of studies involving millions of children have found no causal link.

The tongue is not the strongest muscle in the human body by any standard measure of muscular strength. Depending on how strength is defined, the masseter jaw muscle, the gluteal muscles, or the heart in terms of sustained endurance work are stronger candidates. The tongue is more accurately described as the body's most flexible and dexterous muscular structure.

The claim that people swallow an average of four to eight spiders per year while sleeping is an urban legend with no scientific basis. Both spider and human biology make this scenario extremely unlikely, and no documented cases exist anywhere in the scientific or medical literature.