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List of common misconceptions

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 4, 2026
Entity authorityQ186174 ↗
Source-derived summary

Each entry on these lists of common misconceptions is phrased as a correction; the misconceptions themselves are implied rather than explicitly stated. These entries are concise summaries, and the main subject articles contain more detail.

Common misconceptions are widely accepted viewpoints or factoids that are actually false. They often arise from conventional wisdom (such as old wives' tales), stereotypes, superstitions, logical fallacies, misunderstandings of science, or the popularization of pseudoscience and pseudohistory. Some misconceptions are also considered urban legends and may contribute to moral panics.

Lists

List of common misconceptions about arts and culture

List of common misconceptions about history

List of common misconceptions about science, technology, and mathematics

See also

Further reading

Diefendorf, David (2007). Amazing... But False!: Hundreds of "Facts" You Thought Were True, But Aren't. Sterling. ISBN 978-1-4027-3791-6.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “List of common misconceptions” as wikimedia list article. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around List, common and misconceptions.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2007—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with List, common and misconceptions providing the first useful test.
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Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q186174. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2007.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “List of common misconceptions” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.