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

[SadakoMoose]

Every damn time one of these threads comes up, I have to say this:
Pro Wrestling:
Why do you people have this idea that I somehow don't know that pro wrestling isn't a competitive sport?
Is it 1930? Do I look like a Hillbilly? Not even Hillbillies think that wrestling is a competitive sport. I guarantee that 99% of the grown adults that you will meet in your entire life already know that.

Most pro wrestling aren't slack jawed, lower income, man-children, shouting at foreigners about "terking dehr jerbs". Sure, there are many lower income wrestling fans. What the hell does it matter how much money they have? What? Are their interests somehow less valid than yours because you make more money?

Why all the Gay Panic when you guys talk down to Pro Wrestling? Are you so insecure in your sexuality that you have to reaffirm it by calling someone a "fag"? Why is it you look at pro wrestling and say "that's gay", but then MMA is the perfect alpha male sport, even though they wear less clothing? Why should I be insulted by the implication that I'm a homosexual? Isn't that the same thing if you tried to insult me by telling me that I looked "Jewish"? I'm neither gay, nor Jewish, but why do you think that being either of those would be bad things?

No, most pro wrestlers don't do steroids. It's a dangerous job, it takes a great physical toll on the body, so subsequently most wrestlers hit the gym very frequently. If you actually LOOK at what a modern pro wrestler typically looks like, you don't see the sort of over-pumped physiques that you did in the 80's and 90's. Of course, you haven't watched wrestling in 20 years and yet you deem yourself worthy to talk down to me and my interests.

About a year ago, I gave a presentation about pro wrestling to a class I was in. Afterwards, I got to do some Q and A. This guy in the back raised his hand, and asked if I knew that wrestling was fake. He went on with questions regarding the socio-economic class of wrestling fans, as well as their sexuality. The teacher eventually told him to stop, but I honestly didn't mind fielding the questions, because I already knew the answers. Crappy questions, easy answers. But what struck me was how this guy was acting, compared to his interests. We'd talked before, so I knew that we both liked to collect comics and that we both had a thing for video games. He also liked to play pen and paper RPG's. What do you think are the chances that some assholes in high school probably did the same damn thing to him? Told him that his hobbies were "gay" or "stupid"? Talked down to him like a mouth breathing, socially awkward, man child?

Honestly, this SHOULD NOT be an issue. And yet it is...

 

[j0frenzy]

History student minoring in poli sci (specifically foreign relations). Pretty much anytime someones says Russia is in meddling somewhere for the oil. Not always wrong, but given that Russia is the #1 producer of oil of any single country. (second is Saudi Arabia behind about 300K bbl/day) beat only by multi country organizations like Arab League and OPEC which have alot of over lap it is wrong 99.9% of the time. Actually, people's conception of Russian and Soviet history in general.

I found out someone at my university's history program honestly believes Reagan was the reason the USSR ended.

I'm on expert on constitutional law to a degree and I can't really say a lot of it gets on my nerves, but I also tend to ignore people who aren't also experts.
Oh, and I have more than a passing knowledge in the Cold War that I often correct some people on. I can't think of anything specific right now, but there is a lot of fun information out there. Such as the Soviet Union brought no camouflage equipment to Cuba in 1962 because they were too used to working in locations where the US could not send spy planes. Cuba, being a much smaller country than Russia, did not have a safe spot to set up nuclear missiles without spy planes being able to fly overhead, ergo, Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

[disgruntledgamer]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Are you serious? People confuse ancient human civilizations with paleontology.

 

[Gabanuka]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Ouch, I could see that one hurting. Have you been to any interesting digs?

 

[Vhite]

Typing very fast on keyboard is not how hacking/programming/anything technical is ever really done.

The thing is that these actions CAN look like that even in reality. Especially with Linux users because everything there CAN be made to be controlled purely by keyboard and SOME people find it to be more effective (and some just want to look like hackers).

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

Bit of a WWI buff myself - the thing that annoys me is that most people's understanding if the war seems to stem entirely from watching Blackadder Goes Forth.

The public assumption that Hague was a moron who never learnt anything and refused to move on from 19th Century Doctrine whilst ignored any and all technologically innovation in favour of glorious sweeping cavalry charges, and didn't give a damn about the lives of the men under his command...pretty much all bollocks

 

[Thedutchjelle]

I study Biomedical Sciences, so the oft-heard misconceptions about human health, biology or science in general piss me off to no end:
-You only use 10% of your brain!
-Eating sugar makes you hyperactive!
-All the vaccination conspiracy loons

 

[IndomitableSam]

Oh, geez. Once I get started, I don't stop.

I'm a librarian. People have no fucking clue what we do.

I'm not even going to try to explain it... or even goggle or wikipedia it. Because I don't have to. Librarians were huge parts of building both of those, to begin with.

Seriously, I want to pick up a book and beat people's faces in when they think I just sit there and read books and check books in and out.

Want to know what a librarian does? Look it up. ... If you know how. After all, we're the ones that teach people how to do that... and the ones that create and maintain the search engines and web pages you're using. What? That has nothing to do with books? Librarians don't deal in just books - our job is information. Every goddamn aspect of information. Books just happen to have information in them. So do newspapers, magazines, the internet, governments, schools, businesses, law firms, hospitals, research centres, the UN... Look in any of those places (and more) and you'll find us there. We design databases, search engines, websites, copyright law, company protocols... pretty much everything we have our hands in, because we have the knowledge and skills, or you have to research things first. That or we just make things ourselves.

Gah. Now I've gone and riled myself up.

I need to get back to my spreadsheets and accounting. Because that's what I'm working on right now. Then it'll be statistics, then contacting local businesses for information/requests for documents, then dealing with invoices, tracking down annual reports, creating records for periodicals... maybe I'll touch a book later this week if I find the time to shelve some or recieve some in the mail that I ordered. Otherwise I'll be organizing emergency first aid training, monitoring climate conditions in the rare book room (which houses more than books), recording the tempratures and humidity levels from the hygothermograph and.... I'm to goddamn overworked.

 

[DevilWithaHalo]

"Are you SURE this storyboard doesn't leave anything out?"

I am getting the impression that I may have to use that very statement sometime in the foreseeable future.

Let's call this my side business. I'm working with a client who is trying to modernize their material. We're talking things that were filmed in the 80's (you can see mullets!). And they decided to go with 3D and I got involved in the project. While the person knows more about the subject material than anyone I know, it creates some issues that she has no concept of anything with 3D. Luckily, she had admitted it and relied on me to forward the project myself. So I spent a little bit of energy explaining that the things she wants may be beyond her time frame and her budget, as well as exceedingly difficult for one person to do. (Quick plug, if anyone feels proficient with Rigging in Maya, I may be able to offer a brief gig for cheap labor)

As my day profession, since I work a rather technical field which tends to vary form day to day, I spend a great deal of time explaining why we can't do certain things or how I can't just flip a switch to make things magically happen.

I also enjoy watching movies that have some element to science and often find myself laughing at their ridiculous premise. I'm quite fond of how movies like Bond always seems to provide them the right tool for the right job in 5 minutes. When in gods name did they develop that stuff? And more aptly; who designed it? Why did they design it and how much did it cost?

Case in point, MI: Ghost Protocol (I know, I just watched it). The hallway screen. Seriously? Who's ass did they pull that out of in the span of 15minutes of 'story' time?

 

[Frezzato]

My area of expertise is tanks and overall weapons.

It's amazing who thinks that a tank can survive several penetrating hits (there are some freak incidences, but if it goes through it kills), and I actually had to prove (not the hard way, mind) that a flamethrower only lasted ten seconds or less, as opposed to minutes.

Tanks....YUM. Chobham armor FTW. Chobham with a layer of depleted uranium...drool.

 

[Frezzato]

I'm not an expert in anything, but at my last job I taught myself Excel. After 3 years, starting from scratch, I became the most knowledgeable person at my company with it. Interestingly, none of the freelance programmers that were hired for a side project could help me. The syntax is entirely different at the top layer, although it can use visual basic for complicated problems. Bearing that in mind, Excel is one of those programs where everyone uses it but don't understand how to use it best.

People don't realize that the real "work" in using Excel is realizing how you input data; as in dedicated columns for specific fields. You have to watch your typos, including dead spaces accidentally typed after characters, which have to be 'cleaned' out with TRIM or something. Too many people sharing sheets like a poor man's database when things like SQL and a web interface would have turned out best.

A sales manager wanted a territory map of the different counties in our state, so they approached the graphic designer on staff. He was taking forever, so I just took a high res image and traced over it using Excel's freeform drawing tool and got a perfectly scalable vector image--all during lunch. The company just kept buying new tools without realizing the potential of the tools we already had.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Tanks....YUM. Chobham armor FTW. Chobham with a layer of depleted uranium...drool.

Slightly off topic... but do you know the construction of Chobham armour? (Spelt with a 'u'... it's British after all!)

And why would you want depleted uranium in vehicle armour, out of curiosity? '

 

[GaryH]

I guess the big misconception in photography is that anyone can do it. Your photos suck and you should feel bad. It's because you aren't even visually literate. You don't see illiterate folk writing novels do you? No you don't, because they can't fucking write. It's the same with you and photography. Stop handing a camera to your uncle Steve if it's an important event and hire a professional. Also, stop showing us bad photos.

Graphic Designer/Illustrator here, I feel your pain.

There's a misconception that visual arts are entirely subjective. They aren't.

 

[Bvenged]

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.

While this may hold true in some areas of IT and Computing, it is quite the contrary for Computer Forensics and Security. Especially since a lot of espionage is done digitally now, as is sabotage and crime.

As many have mentioned in this thread already, I'd like to add a little spin to things:
Anyone can "hack" using some free software that does all the work for you, such as committing a DoS attack on a commercially available home router, but it take a genius to infiltrate robust systems AND get away with it.

 

[Moose]

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Are you serious? People confuse ancient human civilizations with paleontology.

Yeah it happens. I just tell them I don't dig deep enough to find dinosaurs. Saves me trying to explain that the study of dinosaurs is a different thing entirely.

Graduated with a degree in Archaeology a few years back. The amount of people who had asked me if I had dug up any dinosaurs....

Ouch, I could see that one hurting. Have you been to any interesting digs?

I've actually only been on one and that was for part of my degree. Spent three weeks in a tent and all I found was soil and rocks. Shame I didn't take geology otherwise it would have been a good trip!

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

I study history. Specifically the medieval era, though I am also a WW2 buff on the side.

Armor is not ultra heavy and impossible to maneuver in (in fact you can mount a horse, cartwheel, and even swim in the stuff), swords are not extremely heavy and unwieldy, the Katana is an okay sword and not an amazing godlike one, the West has a huge documented martial arts tradition that may actually have more written records than the Eastern ones, English longbows cannot pierce plate armor, mail was more expensive than plate armor in later years, Voltaire's opinions on the Holy Roman Empire can go to hell, Vikings were not barbarians, the Muslim world was for most of history better than the Christian one, there is no such thing as "studded leather", what most people call "bastard swords" are actually called long swords and what people call long swords are actually arming swords, life wasn't as bad as people think it was, and on and on and on.

The average person has their entire view of the Middle Ages created through D&D and video games.

 

[Frezzato]

Tanks....YUM. Chobham armor FTW. Chobham with a layer of depleted uranium...drool.

Slightly off topic... but do you know the construction of Chobham armour? (Spelt with a 'u'... it's British after all!)

And why would you want depleted uranium in vehicle armour, out of curiosity? '

Heh, I WISH I knew the components , but it's a top secret formula after all, so it's none of my business.



From what I understand, It was America that added the depleted uranium layer to the Chobham formula, used in only the A2 versions of the Abrams and beyond. Also, seeing how we (as in the U.S.) are one of the few nations with nuclear power plants, I'm guessing we had tons upon tons of leftover depleted uranium and found an actual use for it (I'm guessing). The addition made the frontal protection unmatched supposedly. Unfortunately, I've seen pictures of a single fatal RPG hit on the side of an Abrams, which was designed to take shots head-on. The DU also led to a very heavy combat weight of at least 80 tons, which probably wasn't the ideal match with the Abrams' gas turbine engine.

I heard that the use of a gas turbine means that it burns the same amount of gas whether it's idling or hauling ass at 45 mph.

 

[NinjaSniperAssassin]

I'm hardly an expert, but I've taken multiple classes and written multiple papers on psychopathy, and it pisses me off to no end when people use the term wrong. It's the media's fault mostly. No, CSI, just because you have a serial killer on your hands doesn't mean he's psychopathic. No, Dead Rising, those crazy, violent survivors ARE NOT PSYCHOPATHS. Even Dexter isn't actually a psychopath. Seven Psychopaths... you get a pass. Still Hollywood-ized, but at least they actually hit on the fact that psychopathy is a personality disorder, not just a synonym for crazy.

 

[SckizoBoy]

Armor is not ultra heavy and impossible to maneuver in (in fact you can mount a horse, cartwheel, and even swim in the stuff), swords are not extremely heavy and unwieldy, the Katana is an okay sword and not an amazing godlike one, the West has a huge documented martial arts tradition that may actually have more written records than the Eastern ones, English longbows cannot pierce plate armor, mail was more expensive than plate armor in later years, Voltaire's opinions on the Holy Roman Empire can go to hell, Vikings were not barbarians, the Muslim world was for most of history better than the Christian one, there is no such thing as "studded leather", what most people call "bastard swords" are actually called long swords and what people call long swords are actually arming swords, life wasn't as bad as people think it was, and on and on and on.

I'm not a medieval history buff, but I will pick up on that one, because I have a few of Fechtbuecher. It's silly how people in general, when you do point out that the German and Italian schools of swordsmanship were just as diverse and martial as their Chinese/Japanese counterparts (if not more so because of the great deal of weapons whose martial forms were codified), they turn a blind eye unashamedly because 'it looks boring'. Moreover, the level of spiritual philosophy (i.e. channelling strength/energy etc.), which again is as much as eastern sword-arts, in them just goes straight over their heads. The rage... :/

On a lighter note, as someone who understands German, dear god in heaven it's impossible to understand the rustic language a lot of the Fechtbuecher were written in!

From what I understand, It was America that added the depleted uranium layer to the Chobham formula, used in only the A2 versions of the Abrams and beyond. Also, seeing how we (as in the U.S.) are one of the few nations with nuclear power plants, I'm guessing we had tons upon tons of leftover depleted uranium and found an actual use for it (I'm guessing). The addition made the frontal protection unmatched supposedly. Unfortunately, I've seen pictures of a single fatal RPG hit on the side of an Abrams, which was designed to take shots head-on. The DU also led to a very heavy combat weight of at least 80 tons, which probably wasn't the ideal match with the Abrams' gas turbine engine.

I heard that the use of a gas turbine means that it burns the same amount of gas whether it's idling or hauling ass at 45 mph.

Blimey... we must find a physicist to explain this! Just guessing, but I think the density of the uranium layer within the ceramic tiles, probably just in front of the matrix layer makes it a helluva lot tougher in terms of taking the impact out of kinetic projectiles... not sure how it'd work against shaped projectiles, but eh... strange that... -_-

 

[Pieturli]

Strength training.

I'm not really a professional, but I know quite a bit more about it than most, mainly by reading tons of books written by people who really know their shit.

Misconceptions:

"Strength training makes women big and bulky"
- Not possible for 99,99% of women without using steroids. Women lack the testosterone required to build big chunky muscles

"Strength training is not an important part of general physical fitness"
-This one seriously baffles me. A lot of people nowadays seem to think that physical fitness just means being able to jog for miles and miles. Bullshit. A wholly, completely fit human being is strong, fast, agile and has endurance, not just a frail little skeleton who's only ability is lumbering along at a slow speed for mile after mile. People seem to forget that we consist of more than just a brain and some organs; we have a musculo-skeletal system, and you need to keep that strong if you want to truly be physically fit. I can tell you from my own experience that a human being is quite simply happier strong than weak.

"Strength is not important for athletes"
-This one REALLY, REALLY baffles me. If strength is not important, why did baseball players suddenly start smashing home run records once they started roiding? To be fair, the majority of the people who claim that strength is not important for sports are recreational endurance athletes, like what most cyclists are. Obviously, strength is not a top priority for an endurance athletes, but to say that they don't benefit from it at all is complete horseshit. I'll paraphrase ol' Rips cyclist example. Each time a cyclist presses down on the pedal, they are using a portion of the maximum force that their leg (and posterior chain and so on) can produce. If the maximum force that their leg can produce goes up, that means that they use a smaller portion of that force to push down on the pedal. In other words, they become more effective at carrying their body across a distance. Strength is important to all sports, the only thing that varies is the cutoff point. Obviously, a cyclist is not going to need as much strength as, lets say, a wrestler.


"Strength training is dangerous and I'll get hurt"
-No. No it isn't. It is in fact significantly safer than, for example, running. In fact, strength specifically protects you from injury (stronger people are harder to kill etc.). Yeah, if you squat completely wrong, it could very well hurt you. That's the lesson: squat right. It will save you all kinds of trouble.


This last one isn't really a misconception as such, but it still kind of irritates me.

"I don't care about being able to squat 600 pounds"
- No one is saying that you need to squat 600 pounds, just that it would be be beneficial for you to be strong on a general level. People often equate strength with powerlifting or olympic weightlifting but those two sports are an extreme specialization in strength (or explosive strength in the case of OL, to be exact). I never try to convince anyone to do that, I just tell them that if you get stronger on a reasonable level, it will be beneficial.