Dumb Myths We Need To Put An End To Right Now

Although it was true in the past, today there are virtually no police departments in the US or Canada with a 24-hour, 48-hour, or any waiting period for filing missing person reports.

In fact, a shorter time frame is incredibly important in missing person cases, because most are solved within 24 hours and the vast majority within a week. For that reason, police departments usually encourage filing a report as soon as possible. 

An often-repeated stat is that the average person swallows eight (or another number) spiders a year (or another time frame) while sleeping, but it doesn't have a credible source. In fact, much of its popularity can be attributed to a troll job done by Snopes co-founder David Mikkelson.

Considering how often a person sleeps, how deeply a person can sleep, and how many spiders live in the average house, making an unintentional midnight snack out of a spider could happen, but experts say it would be an anomaly. Spiders are scared of slumbering humans - and slumbering humans are scared enough of spiders to freak out long before any spider could make it down their throat.

Alpha, beta, and omega designations are commonly applied to wolves, with the "alpha" being the strongest and thus highest-ranking member of the pack, the "beta" the middle, and the "omega" the lowest. It sounds accurate, and for many years it was the scientifically accepted structure, but the propagator of that theory, L. David Mech, realized he was wrong and has spent the last few decades trying to correct his mistake.

It turns out that that structure had been observed mostly in captive packs consisting of strangers. Wild wolf packs are traditionally familial, with the mother and father as the leaders. To promote the proper hierarchy, Mech has gone so far as to implore publishers to stop printing his seminal book, The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species.

Dominance hierarchies exist in other animal groups, but they're generally more complex than the alpha, beta, and omega designations, especially among humans.

The common cold, despite its name, is caused by viruses like rhinoviruses and coronaviruses. Yet cold weather can increase one's risk of catching a cold. The phenomenon appears to be both physical and social.

Physically, cold weather means a colder body temperature and thus a weakened immune system. Socially, cold weather means more people packed indoors and thus greater viral spread. But the weather being a little chilly when you go out ultimately has no bearing on the cold itself.

Rather than hating the color red, bulls actually can't properly perceive the color red! Like dogs, bulls are partially color-blind, which means that the hue of a matador's cape is irrelevant.

There are many other factors in a bull fight that could make them angry, like the movement of the cape, the teasing of the matador, or possibly the spears in its back.

Despite constant parental warnings, multiple studies have shown that knuckle-cracking does not lead to arthritis. One of them involved one man, Dr. Donald L. Unger, who cracked the knuckles on his left hand every day for 50 years. For his valiant effort, Dr. Unger won an Ig Nobel Prize, which recognizes strange scientific achievements.

However, other studies have noted that chronic knuckle-cracking can cause non-arthritic ailments, such as swelling and impaired grip strength. It is especially unadvisable to crack your knuckles if you have a preexisting joint condition.