• Relativity has misled us for "a staggeringly long time."

    From LaurenceClarkCrossen@21:1/5 to All on Thu Jun 20 20:19:34 2024
    "Academic urban legends"
    Ole Bjørn Rekdal

    "Abstract
    Many of the messages presented in respectable scientific publications
    are, in fact, based on various
    forms of rumors. Some of these rumors appear so frequently, and in such complex, colorful, and
    entertaining ways that we can think of them as academic urban legends.
    The explanation for this
    phenomenon is usually that authors have lazily, sloppily, or
    fraudulently employed sources, and
    peer reviewers and editors have not discovered these weaknesses in the manuscripts during
    evaluation. To illustrate this phenomenon, I draw upon a remarkable case
    in which a decimal
    point error appears to have misled millions into believing that spinach
    is a good nutritional source
    of iron. Through this example, I demonstrate how an academic urban
    legend can be conceived
    and born, and can continue to grow and reproduce within academia and beyond....Spinach as a good source of iron
    I will illustrate this situation with an example I encountered not long
    ago, in which a
    scientific article I was reading presented me with some new and outright fascinating
    knowledge. The following quote, including the reference, is taken from
    an article published by K. Sune Larsson in the Journal of Internal
    Medicine:
    The myth from the 1930s that spinach is a rich source of iron was due to misleading information
    in the original publication: a malpositioned decimal point gave a
    10-fold overestimate of iron
    content [Hamblin, 1981]. (Larsson, 1995: 448–449)1
    The quote caught my attention for two reasons. First, it falsified an
    idea that I had carried
    with me since I was a child, that spinach is an excellent source of
    iron. The most striking
    thing, however, was that a single decimal point, misplaced 80 years ago,
    had affected not
    just myself and my now deceased parents, but also a large number of
    others in what we
    place on our table.
    After reading Larsson’s article, I took a poll of colleagues at my
    institute, asking them
    why they think spinach is healthy. The conclusion was quite clear. The
    belief that spinach
    is a good source of iron, although falsified 30 years ago by Hamblin in
    a British Medical
    Journal article, is still widespread among my colleagues, all of whom
    have, at minimum,
    a master’s degree in health sciences. In fact, the history of spinach consumption in the
    Western world indicates that we are dealing with a decimal point error
    of enormous consequences. For generations, parents have been wasting
    their time and energy, nagging
    their more or less anemic children to eat a vegetable that the young
    typically abhor, ruining family social events in the process.
    Truth be told, there is iron in spinach, but not significantly more than
    in other green
    vegetables, and few people can consume spinach in large quantities. A
    larger problem
    with the idea of spinach as a good source of iron, however, is that it
    also contains substances that strongly inhibit the intestinal absorption
    of iron (see e.g. Garrison, 2009:
    400). Simply put, spinach should not at all be the first food choice of
    those suffering from
    iron deficiency.
    Larsson’s article made me aware of the remarkable fact that a large
    number of people
    in the Western world have been misled for a staggeringly long time."

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