Myths about the brain

We've probably all been taken in by the first two here, but did anyone seriously ever believe the last two?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15619393

The Daily Mail is the worst for this. It leaps on one say sentence in the abstract or conclusion and extrapolates it into a whole article presented as fact to scare its readers. If you actually go and read the paper that they are basing the story on, it usually says something very different.

Hmm, my wife is a scientist and from what she's told me, there's a lot of bad or stupid practice going on there too. For example, researchers in influenza vaccines (her field) are currently celebrating manipulating bird flu and mutating it so that ferrets can catch it from each other. This is seen as a great breakthrough because ferrets are the "gold standard" in testing as they are far closer to humans genetically than the other test animals that can be used, so they can have more efficient tests.

The main fear with bird and swine flu has always been the chance that it could mutate into a form that we can catch from each other. So they've actually helped it on a step of that journey as part of their research. Brilliant. She's getting out of that field.