One of my favorites, that I tell myself internally but seldom share with others, is bee eyes.
I went through grade school in the 70's and 80's, and some of my education took place at some smaller institutions. The teachers were probably just as good (if not better) than the ones available in massive public school systems, but the resources were sometimes recycled and inaccurate. A particular e.g.: The definition of a Solar Eclipse in my freshman year science book: When the moon comes between the earth and the sun and casts its shadow on the sun. This sentence seems to imply the earth shines brighter then the sun.
Back to bees. I was taught that the multi-faceted eyes of bees produced dozens or scores of mostly identical singular images that overlap only slightly, making the eyesight of the bee more like a kaleidoscope. I thought this was pretty ineffective way to see things, but I learned it just like everyone else.
At some point after that, mostly by chance, I watched a PBS special on bees. This was sometime in the twenty-first century. They explained the eyes of bees, like many insects, are able to see polarized light due to the multi-facets of their eyes. And the program continued by giving a visual example of what a bee sees when it looks at a flower compared to what a plain ole human sees.
So, bees eyes. It is a pretty fair bet that the eyesight of bees didn't change from 1970 to 2010. But there wasn't a massive, all-human announcement about the error. It is plausible that I would still be propagating the misinformation of bees eyes today, if I hadn't stumbled across that program.
And, who cares about bees? Aren't they all dying anyway? The point is, sometimes we are wrong. We are wrong, and we don't seem to do a great job at correcting the mistakes.
more later
-gs
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