Popular misconceptions about your area(s) of expertise...

[SckizoBoy]

To keep myself entertained while at a bizarre meeting with a client, I sifted through a few popular history books our host had on his shelves. One of which was a generalised affair about decisive battles and blah-dy blah-dy blah. Went to the section about ancient Rome and dear god in heaven the author so obviously knew sweet fuck all about them. Errors in their constitution, biographies, historicity and even popular legends were ballsed up. I then had to tolerate the client's number two (probably in both senses of the expression) spout further crap... and I had to bite my tongue because they gave us a lot of business and it would've seemed very petty to my boss who was also present.

Worst bit was regarding the Second Punic War (discerning forum-goers will realise I know my shit when it comes that subject) and Hannibal & elephants, and the dictatorship of Fabius Maximus... who was one of eleven (twelve after a fashion) dictators who served during that was etc. etc. etc. It was just as well that it was a Friday afternoon and I felt too knackered to argue and wanted a whiskey more than an argument.

So, question: what's your area of expertise, and what pisses you off most that people get wrong most often about it?

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I'm something of a Shakespeare expert[footnote]He said, while buffing his tweed jacket's leather elbow patches.[/footnote], with a couple of degrees, even. What really will get me forehead-vein-bulgingly furious is people saying someone else (like the Earl of Oxford) wrote Shakespeare's plays. It's almost always the result of some bizarre snobbishness that says the son of a glovemaker wouldn't be able to write like that.

Oh, and then there are the directors and acting companies that think the spelling and punctuation in the First Folio [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Folio] form some kind of SUPER SECRET ACTING CODE(tm), when five minutes of studying the history of the printing of the book will show that that's complete and utter nonsense. (I auditioned for one of those companies once. It didn't go well.)

 

[JoJo]

As someone studying a science degree, it pisses me off when some people seem to think that science is all about making random guesses and any implausible hypothesis farted out in the space of five minutes can be a "scientific theory", or that it's "all bullshit". I've even encountered this attitude in people who have taken a science A-level, no less.

True, you can never be sure in science exactly what is right and what will eventually be disproved, but that "bullshit" can still be pretty damn useful when it helps get your car to work every morning, grow the crops you eat for lunch, power the entertainment you consume and save your life when you have a heart attack.

 

[Esotera]

I'm sort of split between IT and science at the minute. Everyone seems to think hacking is an incredibly easy activity that requires graphical interfaces and takes a couple of seconds, whereas in reality it will takes weeks and lots of investigation to achieve anything significant. Also there seems to be this really stupid assumption that to do anything useful on a computer you need access to some massive mainframe or server or something, which is complete rubbish.

In biochemistry, everyone seems to think that scientific evidence is absolutely irrefutable & takes pretty much no time to figure out (particularly with DNA sequencing). The CSI effect is alive and well...

 

[Eddie the head]

That you would freeze if you where exposed to space because it's cold. That's a bit of a nitpick but hay.

 

[Quaxar]

As a student of biology it is physically painful to watch creationists babble on about crocoducks, bananas and apes in the zoo suddenly turning human. Oh, and also the "Microevoltion? Sure, but macroevolution is pure crazy!" argumentation they basically have to accept since we could easily disprove that in 20 minutes in the labuh, I mean like a biochemistry laboratory, not like a labradoodle... although dogs are nice examples as well.

And as an EMT, an ambulance is not a goddamn taxi. You'd guess people knew that but you actually have no idea...

 

[Heronblade]

Lets see:

The majority opinion about the field of engineering seems to place us as glorified fix it men

A runner-up on that farce is the opinion that we're those people that drive trains.

Even those that know what we do tend to assume the field is exclusively technical in nature, ignoring the creative and artistic aspects.

 

[Spade Lead]

That you would freeze if you where exposed to space because it's cold. That's a bit of a nitpick but hay.

When people use homonyms like "Hay" when they mean "Hey" or other words that sound similar but really don't mean anything near what they think it does.

"should of" when they mean "Should have."

 

[StylinBones]

I don't trust the "expertise" of anyone on the internet. I'll take a tip or run with an idea from the internet, but we live in the golden age of the Troll. It's too risky to listen to you guys.

OT: Since I work for NASA, a lot of people assume I know secrets about outer space and extraterrestrial life. That's true to a certain degree, but you have to have a pretty high clearance to learn the top-secret stuff.

 

[thesilentman]

I'm only a student. What now?

What? I demand that I take part in this thread! >

 

[Ruedyn]

... You actually go in with your hand shaped in a drill sort of thing, not a fist, despite the name >_>

I don't actually have an area of expertise, being a student and all...

 

[WolfThomas]

I will only argue three things now. I don't have time for anything else. Misconceptions about medicine or medical procedures (as of January 9 next year I'll be a full blown doctor), comics (I've read something like 8,500 issues of DC, Marvel and various other companies) and A Song of Ice and Fire (I have no expertise I'm just a rabid Stannis fan).

 

[Little Woodsman]

Massage therapists make a ton of money. Oh man, if only....
Now I can see where people get this idea--they get a session and pay
the therapist $65 or however much so they think that the therapist
"made" the amount they paid. No one takes in to account that the
therapist is either
A)Working for someone else, and therefore paid an hourly wage that
may or may not reflect the amount paid for the session
or
B)Self-employed and paying a lot of expenses that the client doesn't
see:Rent for the space, professional dues, laundry costs etc, etc...
Not to mention that the hour session for the client actually reflects
about an hour & a half to two hours effort for a self employed therapist.

Seriously, if people took the time to look at the cars driven by the
vast majority of MT's they would lose this notion really quickly.

 

[Mel Theofficegamergirl]

As a bartender, it pisses me off when someone will insist that a certain drink is made, decisively, a certain way, even though there are various forms of that particular drink. Also, bartenders that think that bartending is just mixing drink. Fucking lazy, cocky, inexperienced pieces of shit that think they're 'the shit'. No, you get paid shit, because you are a shit person.

 

[Vault101]

I'm not really an experet in anything...I AM however working on my "art skills"[footnote/]working on being a key phrase[/footnote]

the Idea that "cartoons" (of varying degrees of stylisation) don't require as much artistic skill, theres a diffference between the simplicity you find in a kids drawing, and the stylised style you see in other works, and often do require the knowelege of anatomy and all that

amaturish drawings of Anime are proof of this

 

[rium125]

As a tabletop gamer, I'm often annoyed by people confusing my hobby with LARP, and confusing LARP with what they saw in the film 'Role Models' it's somewhat frustrating to keep having to explain that no, I don't spend my weekends running round the park in a cape waving a stick like an excitable 8-year old.

 

[Little Woodsman]

The many, many tightly held misconceptions about blood donation make me want to grind
my face along the pavement....
Blood that is to be used for patient transfusion is *never* paid for.
If you "gave" blood and were paid for it, it is/was being used for something else.
(And how do you consider it "giving" or a "donation" if you were paid?)
You cannot get HIV or Hepatitis from donating blood.
Practical, affordable synthetic blood does not exist, donated blood is needed to
save the lives of thousands of patients *every* *day*.
Donated blood is *almost* never thrown away. There are many dedicated people putting
a lot of effort in to making sure that all donated blood is used effectively--they
*have* to because there *isn't* *enough* of it to be wasteful!
Note that all of my experience/knowledge comes from donating in, and working in a
blood center in the USA, specifically Colorado. Donated 98 units. Worked there six
and a half years.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Computer Science. Every time someone in some medium is a "hacker" or "computer expert" they are usually using the power of bullshit and technobable. It's a really slow and boring field though so that's the way it goes.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I've worked in photographic enhancement, and the number of times I've been presented with a shitty little thumbnail and requested to somehow turn it into a high quality, poster-sized image is beyond belief.

I'm sorry, this ain't CSI.

Yeah, that CSI stuff is science fiction. When enlarging a digital image the computer has to fill in pixels that simply aren't there and has to "guess" at where they're supposed to go, and 99% of the time it isn't very good at guessing. Which is why most of the time enraged images come out looking like ass.