Lists and Stories

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  Do Fossil Fuels Really Come from Fossils? Fossil fuels include coal, petroleum (oil), natural gas, oil shales, bitumens, and tar sands and heavy oils. For modern life, these energy sources rival food and water in importance. Without fossil fuels, most automobiles are stranded, most of the lights go out, and our homes become hotter in...
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  Do GM Foods Affect the Body Differently? Genetically modified (GM) foods affect the body in the same way as non-GM foods. In fact, multiple studies comparing the safety of GM and non-GM foods have found no difference in how these foods affect the body. For example, GM foods are not more likely to cause allergic reactions than non-GM...
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  Do Hurricanes Happen on Other Planets? Technically speaking, no planets apart from Earth are known to have hurricanes. This is partly because of the definition of a hurricane, which is not just a big storm but a type of cyclone driven by convection processes specific to warm-water oceans. But other planets do have massive storms. Mars...
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  Do Hyenas Really Laugh? The spotted, or laughing, hyena (Crocuta crocuta) is a ruthless scavenger and killer, burglarizing food stores, stealing livestock, consuming wastes, and occasionally even killing people. While this behavior has earned the spotted hyena a reputation, it may be even better known for the...
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  Do Lemmings Really Commit Mass Suicide? Lemmings are small creatures with wild reputations. In the 17th century, naturalists perplexed by the habit of Norway lemmings to suddenly appear in large numbers, seemingly out of nowhere, came to the conclusion that the animals were being spontaneously generated in the sky and then falling to...
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  Do Lie Detectors Actually Work? A staple of crime television shows is the image of a suspect sweating nervously in an interrogation room as the detectives use a polygraph test to decide whether the suspect is innocent or guilty. The polygraph, frequently shown on these television programs as a surefire way to determine a person’s...
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  Do Mongooses Make Good Pets? Mongooses are unlikely to rank anywhere on lists of the most popular or lowest-maintenance pets because, frankly, they are not common pets. (According to a 2016 survey of 27,000 online consumers in 22 countries, dogs have the distinction of being the world’s most popular pets.) While mongooses are...
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  Do Plants Emit Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide at Night? Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use energy from the sun to make food. They use carbon dioxide from the air and water from the soil to make sugar and oxygen. Most plants release oxygen only during the day, when the sun can power photosynthesis. The exceptions to this general rule are...
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  Do Plants Feel Pain? Given that plants do not have pain receptors, nerves, or a brain, they do not feel pain as we members of the animal kingdom understand it. Uprooting a carrot or trimming a hedge is not a form of botanical torture, and you can bite into that apple without worry. However, it seems that many plants...
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  Do Plants Have Sexes? The idea of “male” and “female” in plants is a bit mysterious to many people, and there are several variations on the theme throughout the plant kingdom. In plants, as with most animals, the male parts are associated with production of sperm, and the female parts are associated with eggs. Thus, in...
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  Do Sharks Really Die if They Stop Swimming? It’s a widespread belief: If sharks stop swimming, they die. But is that actually true? Let’s find out. If you look at the nurse shark and the tiger shark, this belief is already proven false: these, and a few other shark species, can stop swimming whenever they want. They breathe by way of buccal...
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  Do Sharks Sleep? It is a common misconception that sharks as a species never sleep because they must keep moving to stay alive. Sharks do engage in periods of rest throughout the day, but it is much different from the kind of sleep that other animals engage in. It is true that many types of sharks must keep moving...
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  Do the Relics of Saint Nicholas Really Emit a Holy Substance? Saint Nicholas is a popular saint among Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians, distinguished for his magnanimity in his lifetime and for his purported ability to perform miracles for those in need. His reputation partially inspired the development of a similarly generous patron figure of...
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  Do Toilets in Different Hemispheres Flush in Different Directions? Imagine for a moment that you are trapped aboard a ship in the ocean without a map, a radio, GPS, or any landmarks. Is there a way to determine at least which hemisphere you are in? This scene played out in the movie Escape Plan (2013) in which the main character, Breslin, played by American actor...
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  Do Vaccines Cause Autism? No, vaccines do not cause autism. This damaging claim became a controversial issue in 1998, when a paper published in the journal The Lancet suggested that childhood vaccination was linked to autism. The claim subsequently fueled fears among some parents and resulted in widespread misinformation...
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  Do We Really Swallow Spiders in Our Sleep? The belief that we swallow an average of eight spiders in our sleep every year has become so ingrained in popular culture that many people now accept it as fact. The reality, however, is quite different: we swallow no spiders at all. There are several reasons why spiders don’t bother us in our...
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  Do We Really Use Only 10 Percent of Our Brain? It’s one of Hollywood’s favorite bits of pseudoscience: human beings use only 10 percent of their brain, and awakening the remaining 90 percent—supposedly dormant—allows otherwise ordinary human beings to display extraordinary mental abilities. In Phenomenon (1996), John Travolta gains the ability...
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  Does Ball Lightning Exist? More than 200 years ago, the crew of the HMS Warren Hastings reported being attacked by giant balls of fire that descended from the sky. The mysterious fireballs reportedly set the ship on fire and killed several people. A century later, a “dazzling globe of electric fire” appeared in the cottage...
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  Does Listening to Mozart Make Kids Smarter? One of the most tenacious myths in parenting is the so-called Mozart effect, which says that listening to music by the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart can increase a child’s intelligence. The idea has been promoted by advocates for arts education and by retailers who sell special...
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  Does Tomato Juice Really Neutralize Skunk Odor? The distribution of skunks is widespread across North America, and encounters involving them are on the increase as humans intrude into the woodlands and fields that are the skunk’s principal habitat. Because it is not unusual for encounters with skunks to end with a staggering odor and the rather...