It’s something I vividly remember being taught in primary school – the tongue has areas which can only taste sweet, savoury, etc. and they showed us a diagram of where each area was on the tongue. It was the most easily disprovable idea and we all knew it made no sense…and lo and behold it turned out to be total nonsense. How did this idea ever make its way into curriculums and textbooks and did it ever have the backing of the science community? (Also, feel free to share the dumbest thing you were ever taught in school for comparison!)
In: Biology
I suppose it’s one of those things that do not affect you directly so u just assume it’s true without giving any thought into it.
I imagine because parts of your tongue are more sensitive and full of nerves and taste buds than other parts.
It was a mistranslation and a misinterpretation of the data. There is some difference in the taste buds across the tongue but it is not significant. However when the scientific papers were translated from German to English to be taught in English universities these differences were taken out of proportion. Further misinterpretation of this paper by textbook writers had them write that the tongue map showed exclusive areas for the taste buds. And because this was considered a fact nobody thought to challenge it. And because it was not a very important area of research nobody got the funding to do further research on this.
it made it because it’s true. some books may have exaggerated it to teach that you can ONLY taste 1 flavor per zone, but saying you can taste every flavor equally in every zone (as is often done in backlash against this teaching) is just as wrong. the tongue has zones that are more sensitive to specific flavors
Probably the dumbest thing I was taught in school was the food pyramid. Not sure how it is now, but it used to say that breads should make up the vast majority of your diet, with fruits like apples and bananas in second place.
Now we have an epidemic of obesity, and half of everybody I went to school with has type 2 diabetes.
Edit: I forgot my numbers
Aristotle thought that mayflies had four legs and this was taught for centuries as true when anyone could have counted 6 legs.
Some people still believe that men have one less rib than women because of Adam.
People believe all kinds of nonsense because an authority figure told them.
I remember doing this test in elementary school. The teacher introduced the idea of different taste zones, then gave us different food to test out the idea. When asked who was able to taste the difference, the majority of class raised their hand. I was one of the few who said there was no difference. Made me feel like an outsider.
Placebo is strong.
One time my 4th grade science teacher was telling us that blood is blue when there is no oxygen. Using the blue veins on her model skeleton as evidence. I said it wasn’t true and just looked that way through your skin and she vehemently disagreed. Then everyone made fun of me for pronouncing gauge wrong later on.
Another time a teacher said that laser beams have the same beam width no matter how far the beam goes, and I said that in the real world laser beams do actually get wider or smaller along the length of the beam depending on how the focusing is set up. I even mentioned how it was measured in milliradians. Do not remember the reaction other than being told that was wrong.
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I was taught this in primary school as well. I only learned it wasn’t true when I was over 18 lol
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