Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Carrot Lies Unmasked!

The Scientopia Guest Blogge now has an ophthalmologist explaining that the reason we've all heard that carrots are good for your eyesight is because the Royal Air Force deliberately lied about it during World War II.

Shocking! However, as all's fair in love and war, it was justified at the time. The alternative would have been to admit the truth about newly developed radar technology, which (rather than good eyesight due to prodigious carrot-eating) was helping RAF pilots hit enemy targets at night.

Instead, we got an elaborate fiction about carrots being good for your vision, which still echoes today.

At least now we know the truth. Thanks, cherylmurphy!

Of course, when I go to explain the truth to someone else later I'll probably have forgotten most of the details, and I'll wind up passing on an even weirder fiction, something about how carrots enhance radar detection at high altitudes, and then that will echo through the generations. This is why it's so hard to counter misinformation on the internet.

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