Science Myths
Survival of the fittest was a philosopher's phrase, not Darwin's
The slogan arrived from outside biology and was adopted years later. The ladder-shaped diagram that came with it did more damage…
Science Myths
Physics, biology and space, as taught wrongly in a hundred classrooms.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
Science Myths
The march of progress was a foldout illustration, not a family tree
A popular science series in the mid-1960s ran a row of ancestral figures across a folding page. The sequence was a layout decision…
Science Myths
Galileo probably never dropped anything off the tower, and did not need to
The Pisa demonstration appears only in a biography written by a devoted assistant decades later. The physics is secure, the famous…
Science Myths
Brontosaurus was struck off for a century and then partly reinstated
Two skeletons named in haste during a bone rush looked like one animal, so the second name was retired. A large re-examination a…
Science Myths
The Big Bang was named on the radio by an astronomer who rejected it
The phrase entered English during a broadcast talk given by the leading advocate of the rival steady-state model. The name imported…
Science Myths
Everest is the highest mountain but not the tallest, and both are true
Measured upwards from sea level it wins comfortably. Measured from its own base a Pacific volcano is larger, and measured from the…
Science Myths
The apple fell, Newton watched it, and nothing hit anybody's head
The orchard story comes from Newton himself, told late in life to visitors who wrote it down. The bump on the head, and the instant…
Science Myths
The magnetic north pole is, in magnetic terms, a south pole
A compass needle points north because opposite poles attract, which means the thing it is attracted to must be the opposite kind.…
Science Myths
The seven-fold limit on paper is real, and a schoolgirl broke it with algebra
The claim that no sheet can be folded more than seven times circulated for decades as a fixed fact. A student worked out what…