Facts can and do change as new evidence comes to light—it’s a core part of what science is all about. As we learn more and more about how the world works, we have to update our existing bodies of knowledge. 

This does, however, mean that some information that we learned in the classroom can become outdated within our lifetimes, as members of the r/ask online community recently shared in a viral thread. We’ve collected some of these internet users’ insights about what facts have changed since they learned them in school. Scroll down to read what they had to share.

#1

You can’t carry a calculator all day!

Image credits: Heximalus

#2

The food pyramid

Image credits: drifters74

#3

Gen X here.

We’ll run out of oil by 2000.

Image credits: RredditAcct

NPR points out that scientific knowledge is constantly evolving and changing. It’s not just completely new facts that are discovered. Researchers also take new evidence into account and then use it to reexamine what we thought we already knew. 

“The key is that scientific conclusions don’t change on a whim. They change in response to new evidence, new analyses, and new arguments—the sorts of things we can publicly agree (or disagree) about, that we can evaluate together. And scientific conclusions are almost always based on induction, not deduction. That is, science involves drawing inferences from premises to conclusion, where the premises can affect the probability of the conclusions but don’t establish them with certainty,” NPR explains why we can trust science despite facts changing.

#4

Animals don’t use tools.

Image credits: Canadianingermany

#5

that microwaves kill all the nutrients in food.

Image credits: Acrobatic_Sport_4580

#6

“High school’s gonna be the best four years of your life!”

Reader, it was not the best four years of my life

Image credits: astarisaslave

The reality is that we all have some knowledge blindspots. There are gaps in our knowledge that we’re not even aware of. These can range from misconceptions about common sense things to false interpretations of more complex situations.

The best that any of us can do is to keep an open mind when we come across information that runs counter to our experiences. This means being humble enough to recognize that nobody is perfect, that everyone makes mistakes, and that we might be wrong in some cases. Scientific knowledge is rarely ever stagnant for long.

#7

Grade school in the US, mid 1970s: We will be converting to the metric system soon.

Image credits: tlf555

#8

If you learn well, you`ll get a good job and will have a nice future. Total BS.

Image credits: Steven_Dj

#9

That your permanent record really does follow You for Life a bunch of Bologna

Image credits: confessionofanartist

However, being open-minded does not mean being naive. This doesn’t mean accepting any and every piece of information that comes your way.

As one study from 2021 pointed out, people tend to think that repeated information is more truthful than new information. This is known as the illusory truth effect. To put it simply, the more often we hear a claim, the more we think that it’s true. This means that all people, no matter how educated, can fall prey to everything from fake news to advertisement campaigns.

#10

That 98% of our genes are unused, a throwback of evolution.

Image credits: ArachnidGuilty218

#11

Areas of taste on the human tongue

Image credits: prosperosniece

#12

Pluto being a planet

Image credits: TheKiwiQueen

What facts from your own school days have you seen get disproven within your lifetimes, dear Pandas? Is there any information from your lessons and lectures that you personally find hard to let go of even when you know it has been updated? We’d like to hear what you think—tell us about it in the comments.

#13

That the English language has comprehensive and consistent rules.

Image credits: FafnerTheBear

#14

Just about everything they taught about nutrition was a lie… which is kinda insane when you think about it. An entire generation who doesn’t know how food works in your body

Image credits: pigtailrose2

#15

Basically any idea promoted by the D.A.R.E campaign

Image credits: Mort332e

#16

1970’s elementary school – Global Cooling was in process. We would be out of oil by the end of the 80’s

Image credits: Elvisruth

#17

“There’s no such thing as negative numbers. You can’t take 3 apples away from 2 apples.”

Mrs. Adams, my third grade teacher. I don’t know what other lies she taught me that I still believe today, but the idea of it pisses me off.

Image credits: Snoo-35252

#18

A lot of things that we learned about dinosaurs when I was in elementary school turned out to be wrong. We thought they were scaly and reptilian, turns out a lot of them had feathers, and were very brightly colored, and were more like birds in a lot of ways than reptiles. Dinosaurs we thought existed like brontosaurus, turned out to not have actually existed. 

Just everything dinosaur. Everything dinosaur was wrong.

Image credits: Ambitious-Try-3289

#19

Trickle down economics

Image credits: DntQuitYaDayJOB

#20

Never could have guessed it’d be so controversial, but “you can’t use ‘they’ as a singular pronoun”.

Image credits: 33ff00

#21

That your heart has a finite number of beats. Once it reaches that number, you die.

Image credits: Kwarktaart27

#22

That by 1999 all the landfills would be full and we would have to use the Grand Canyon and valleys for our garbage

Image credits: ToddHLaew

#23

Earth had 4 oceans.

The 5th ocean plot twist was revealed to me in my late 30s. I didn’t know, guys!!

Could someone please update Gen X when this stuff happens? There should at least be a weekly memo or something. We are all over here failing easy trivia questions because no one told us that there was a 5th damn ocean. ?

#24

Nerves can’t regenerate and electron orbitals are circles. Basically, science keeps getting better and I had no idea these had changed for a long time.

Image credits: Accomplished-Bad-481

#25

Every plate I eat should be MAJORITY pasta, rice, bread or some other kind of carb. The rest should be split between dairy, meat and vegetables equally.

#26

I before E except after C.

Image credits: NateThePhotographer

#27

While I was in college biology our teacher said she was forced to teach us that cell walls were rigid because that’s what the text book said but, she told us, it was not true–the phospho-lipid cell wall had just been discovered. So we learned it wrong and corrected all at the same time.

Image credits: OutOfBody88

#28

The rubber on tires protects you from lightning. It’s actually the metal from of the vehicle. Air is an insulator. If the electricity can jump across thar much space in air, it can surely jump an inch or two of rubber.

#29

The amount of daily milk needed to be healthy, it was 250ml a day and research pretty much showed later that even 25ml is too much. It had something to do with certain people paying doctors to up the milkprices.
Thats the main reason i have zero trust in docs or anything that concerns pharma.

#30

Cheaters never prosper

#31

Mendelian genetics: Eye colour depends on one gene, brown (dominant) and blue (recessive), the rest (grey, green, etc.) is just what happens in the uterus. While this mostly works, multiple genes are playing together. And two blue-eyed parents may still have brown eyed children. 

Image credits: Ok-Painting4168

#32

How dinosaurs looked and behaved has since been reworked and to be honest it’s strange it took so long for anyone to think “wait what if they had fat, feathers and hair like most other animals?”

That the neanderthals were ancestors of humans like homo erectus

That dogs were tamed by the humans (I don’t even know if that was even thought to be right back then)

That the vikings were the first to settle on the americas

#33

Cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis, plus basically everything in history class.

Image credits: DanOfAllTrades80

#34

One more.

My teachers used to say “Video games will make you braindead.”

Turns out video games were all about solving puzzles and problem solving and ended up increasing the cognitive abilities and critical thinking skills for children from a young age.

#35

Blood is blue until it is oxidized

#36

That I really need to know why the author made red doors in his book.

#37

That Christopher Columbus discovered America. Just ask native Americans about this one.

#38

that you have to do lots of extra curricular activities, sports, and volunteer work just to get into any college?

Joke’s on them. I went to college 10 years after high school so none of it mattered.

Image credits: greeneyes826

#39

“Junk DNA has no function” frustrated me to no end. It turns out it was never “junk”. It is actually extremely important to tell the rest of the DNA how to be expressed, and it has played a pivotal role in the evolutive process.

I alway remember my high school teacher insisting that it was only useful for paternity testing, despite it having already been more thoroughly studied by then.

#40

Eating fat causes you to get fat.

Image credits: DMIDY

#41

That breast feeding was a form of contraception

Image credits: alchemicalqueen

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