fastidium

At the top of the “Most Popular” articles on Yahoo! News today is 7 Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe. The original story appears on Live Science here. A group of researchers looked into commonly held beliefs that people, and allegedly some doctors, believe, but are not true. They published it in the British Medical Journal.

Here they are:

1. We use only 10 percent of our brains.
2. You should drink at least eight glasses of water a day.
3. Fingernails and hair grow after death.
4. Shaved hair grows back faster, coarser and darker.
5. Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight.
6. Eating turkey makes you drowsy.
7. Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals.

Dr. Aaron Carroll is cited as saying, “Whenever we talk about this work, doctors at first express disbelief that these things are not true,” said Vreeman said. “But after we carefully lay out medical evidence, they are very willing to accept that these beliefs are actually false.”

There are a couple of questions I have about this study and the way its being presented. First, why should doctors be the ones who are singled out here? If these are common myths, then why are doctors exempt? Presumably, the researchers might answer that doctors should be the ones most likely to have read medical journals or the ones least likely to have false beliefs about these sorts of things. Yet, doctors are just as much a part of popular culture as anyone, aren’t they?

I present a further myth in popular culture:

• Doctors are the most objective, unbiased people when its comes to matters of health and body.