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Why do myths persist?

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age_is_just_a_number
age_is_just_a_number Posts: 630 Member
in Debate Club
We’ve all heard them, believed them, learned they weren’t true. There are so many diet, nutrition and exercise myths. Why do you think they persist?
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  • AlexandraFindsHerself1971
    AlexandraFindsHerself1971 Posts: 3,106 Member
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    A lot of people, even educated people, get a small amount of science/diet information and never bother to update it. Medical school doesn't teach much about diet, even.
  • gorple76
    gorple76 Posts: 162 Member
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    Agree with all of the above. Basically critical thinking skills are in short supply amongst the general population. People very easily believe things, are often unquestioning and amazingly trusting. Particularly if it suits them. Easier to believe your weight problem is caused by things outside of your control than to take on a burden of responsibility for it, for instance. Also, people often think of something worked once for one person in a single situation, it can be generalised. People also don’t understand that things which are generalisable a rent universal. Again, lack of critical thinking skills.
  • SuzySunshine99
    SuzySunshine99 Posts: 2,984 Member
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    Social media.
  • penguinmama87
    penguinmama87 Posts: 1,158 Member
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    EyeOTS wrote: »
    Some of them were from aggressive add campaigns and positions in health eduction. Like the dairy industry pushing the importance or breakfast or 'milk, it does a body good' for a long long time

    I do think one reason some myths persist is because things like this - people who are viewed as authority figures change their advice seemingly on a whim, or it's not presented with sufficient nuance, or some information is withheld for some reason (sometimes bad, but even sometimes well-meant reasons.) Or educated guesses are presented as fact. That, perhaps rightly, makes some people suspicious and more willing to accept "alternative" theories - even if the new expert is even less credible than the one who's been rejected!

    There are several rather well-known stand-up bits about ever changing dietary advice in the twentieth century. I think sometimes the jokes only work because critical details are left out, but that perspective is probably held by a lot of people. They think how to eat healthily is literally unknowable and the people creating the guidelines have been paid off by lobbyists...and they're not *entirely* wrong!

    I'll admit that I am rather skeptical of quite a bit of mainstream news reporting on health issues. When you know a lot about a topic and see how it gets distorted by the average journalist or politician (not necessarily maliciously so, they're just not experts) it can make you skeptical about how they cover a lot of other topics, too. I do hate quackery, so what I often end up doing is going directly to studies and their methodology, etc if I'm highly motivated. But not everybody is trained or has the time available or inclination to do that. I can't really fault people for that, either.

    If it seems like I'm jumping all over the place...it's because I am, haha.
  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    edited September 2021
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    penguinmama87 wrote: »
    -snip-

    I'll admit that I am rather skeptical of quite a bit of mainstream news reporting on health issues. When you know a lot about a topic and see how it gets distorted by the average journalist or politician (not necessarily maliciously so, they're just not experts) it can make you skeptical about how they cover a lot of other topics, too. I do hate quackery, so what I often end up doing is going directly to studies and their methodology, etc if I'm highly motivated. But not everybody is trained or has the time available or inclination to do that. I can't really fault people for that, either.

    If it seems like I'm jumping all over the place...it's because I am, haha.

    To the bolded - would that that were the case for more people! IME folks are more likely to, for some reason, draw the opposite conclusion. You watch a 60 Minutes episode or listen to a podcast or whatever about a topic you're familiar with, you'll see all the parts the hosts get wrong or misrepresent. You might even call or write in to tell them so. But you don't have nearly so critical an ear or eye when they're covering something you don't know anything about, and people tend to defer to authority (or even just information presented authoritatively). So, if you're a professional llama groomer, your takeaway from the 60 Minutes episode about grooming llamas will not be "well heck, these guys don't know *kitten* about *kitten*," it'll be "well, obviously they don't know anything about llama grooming, but they probably know what they're talking about when it comes to [NFTs/rice sculpture/geopolitics/baking/something else you're not an expert in]."

    And it's well-documented that whatever information you encounter first, you're (1) more likely to believe and (2) more likely to continue believing even after being corrected and shown proof that the original information was wrong. Check out the vast Wikipedia archives about cognitive biases that exist and how they work.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,454 Member
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    Because not matter how wild, there is often a shred of truth (even if something only worked for a small group or very specific situation) in any myth?

    The "miracle" get spread and depending on how effective the media spreading it is, becomes sort of a fact.

    Plus as mentioned above by @cwolfman13 people love a magic bullet and will try hard to believe it if it offers any ray of hope.
  • ythannah
    ythannah Posts: 4,365 Member
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    Money is the reason they're born, but the danged internet is the reason they persist. (Irony: I'm posting this on the danged internet :p )

    As far as I recall, the set point theory was a bestselling book at one time. So was the blood type diet, and the one about Gluten is the Source of All Evil and Everything That Ails You. So these theories/myths have found champions, or people who figure enough time has passed that people will have forgotten about it and they can pass it off as original, maybe with a little modern twist, and they get posted up somewhere. Where they attract a whole new band of followers who have come in search of a magic solution.

    Then it gets repeated over and over again because plagiarism is not a dirty word on the internet. I've seen entire paragraphs copy/pasted from one site to another, bad grammar intact.

    So I guess we're back to money because views = ad revenue.
  • NorthCascades
    NorthCascades Posts: 10,970 Member
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    callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »
    I think everyone above is right. The answer why is long and convoluted and multi layered.

    But the short and simple answer is .... because myths are easy to believe.

    I 👍'ed this post, wanted to add that the wrong answer is that there's one answer. 🙂 (As is usually the case with people making decisions.)
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,979 Member
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    There were no myths about dieting before the Internet. /s

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