MetaFilter posts tagged with Mythbusting

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care

homunculus — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:11:03 -0800

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I. Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers. [Via Orcinus.]

Myth-busters have the odds against them

homunculus — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 22:30:38 -0800

Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach. "The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies (PDFs) show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths." [Via Firedoglake, more at MindHacks.]

Another urban legend debunked

riffola — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 21:56:23 -0800

ESA astronaut, Pedro Duque writes "I am writing these notes in the Soyuz with a cheap ballpoint pen. Why is that important? As it happens, I've been working in space programmes for seventeen years, eleven of these as an astronaut, and I've always believed, because that is what I've always been told, that normal ballpoint pens don't work in space... and here I am, it doesn't stop working and it doesn't 'spit' or anything. Sometimes being too cautious keeps you from trying, and therefore things are built more complex than necessary." From Snopes: Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965, which NASA uses. [via GearBits]