@philosophyminis: You've probably heard of the 10,000-hour rule. The idea is that the average person requires 10,000 hours to become an expert at almost anything: at painting, at the banjo, at stone skipping, and so on. But the problem is that this is a misrepresentation of a fact. What happened was that somebody, somewhere, read a scientific paper, and they wrote a headline saying, 'It takes only 10,000 hours to become an expert in anything.' Then somebody read this headline, they wrote an article, somebody read the article, and they wrote a book. And here we are, all repeating the myth without anybody checking our sources. This is an example of the Woozle effect. The Woozle effect comes from Winnie the Pooh, where Pooh and his friends are chasing the tracks of a Woozle. But because the tracks go round and around in the circle, they keep counting the same tracks again and again. In real life, the Woozle effect is when somebody makes a claim, often in a journal or a scientific article, and somebody cites that, and then somebody else cites the citation, and so on. The problem is that the one original claim might have been misinterpreted. It might have been quite dubious to start with, and it might have been simply specific. And yet, now it is all over the internet. For example, take the claims that ‘half of all marriages end in divorce,’ or that ‘you only use 90% of your brain,’ or that ‘playing Mozart to babies makes them smarter.’ All are examples of a repeated claim with only one or an unknown origin. The lesson here is to always check your sources. Check other people's sources as well. Ask yourself if something is really true, or if it's just been repeated again and again.

Jonny Thomson

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Region: GB

Tuesday 08 September 2026 13:15:00 GMT