Popular ideas, potentially refuted

(Last updated: October 2022)

Below is a list of popular ‘turns out’ style content that it (drumroll…) turns out, may not be correct after all. That is – if you are willing to accept the counterarguments.

Books

Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams (Matthew Walker)

• vs “Matthew Walker’s “Why We Sleep” Is Riddled with Scientific and Factual Errors” (Alexy Guzey)

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Yuval Noah Harari)

• vs A Response to Yuval Harari’s ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ (C.R. Hallpike)

The “Ten thousand hours rule” from Outliers (Malcolm Gladwell)

• vs The Sports Gene (David Epstein)

The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)

• vs Is the Tipping Point Toast? (Clive Thompson)

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth)

• vs Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature (Marcus Crede)

Documentaries

What the Health (Netflix)

• vs What the Health: A Movie with an Agenda (Science-Based Medicine)

The Game Changers

• vs The Game Changers Review – A Scientific Analysis (Layne Norton)

Other

Oatly Oat Drink as a healthy alternative to milk

• vs Is Oatly Oat Milk Healthy?, plus Oatley Responds

About David Turnbull

I'm a New Zealander in Sweden, building web-apps with Ruby on Rails.