In recent years, I’ve become interested in dispelling myths. Well, not me personally – that takes a lot of effort and enterprise, two qualities that wax and wane greatly within me. But I am possessed with discovering the story behind the story when it comes to commonly held beliefs. And by discovering, I mean performing a quick Alta Vista search. I’m aware this may seem counterintuitive in many cases, as the Internet is often a font of misinformation. But who are you, the Logic Police? Anyway, here’s a smattering of my favorite fallacies.

8?! Try NONE, jerkwad.  Everybody’s aware of the commonly held belief that humans need to drink eight glasses of water a day for optimal health. In 1945 the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly 2 to 2.5 quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces). But the very next sentence seems to have been almost universally ignored by the general public: “Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” While many health professionals have spoken out against this “guideline” over the years, organizations such as the Mayo Clinic and the NHS still promote the 8-glasses-a-day sham.

50% is 100% wrong. The divorce rate in the United States is 50%. Sigh. It’s pretty much boilerplate for any discussion of how tremendously hard it is to keep a relationship alive in the 21st century. To say nothing of the mind-boggling fact that people have been citing this statistic for eons (really, it stays at 50% every year?!), this is just plain erroneous. Simply stated, the divorce rate is based on a flawed methodology: the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people versus the annual divorce rate per 1,000 people. Problem is, the people divorcing in any given year are not the same as those marrying. The correct method would be to determine the total number of people that have divorced out of the total number of people that have ever entered into marriage. Based on this type of calculation, the highest the divorce rate has ever topped is around 40%. Compounding the issue is that The National Center for Health Statistics stopped tracking data from states on age, income, education and race of divorced individuals. This has led to significant gaps in divorce statistics.

Furthermore, surveys show that the divorce rate is actually on the decline. Researchers credit the fact that people now marry at a later age (putting more consideration into who they want to marry), the increase in individuals with college degrees (the educated have a lower divorce rate) and the economy. Divorce is expensive- a fact that takes on added significance in a down economy.

We also think about sports ‘n stuff. It’s been common knowledge for years that the average male thinks about sex every 7 seconds, or 8,000 times per 16 waking hours for those of you scoring at home. Even more astounding than this statistic is the  fact that it’s survived so long on any level of credibility. A recent study out of The Ohio State University finds that men think about sex about 19 times per day. Women, by comparison, reported a median of 10 thoughts about sex per day. The study also shows that men think about food 18 times and sleep 11 times per day, compared with 15 and 8 for women. Perhaps the most shocking result of the study is that the average male has 4 thoughts per day about what Bronson Pinchot is up to at the given moment. In retrospect, that study may be broken.