Debunking

Hear, hear! Your opinion (Feb. 1) regarding the distribution of the AIDS information pamphlet to students, parents and teachers is an enlightened one. I applaud the Orange County Board of Supervisors for realizing the serious threat that the AIDS virus poses to the uninformed, and taking steps to protect our children by providing them with facts --not misinformation. I have seen the "Teens and AIDS" pamphlet and find it to be straightforward and factual. It debunks several common myths about acquired immune deficiency syndrome and its transmission, and it also discusses sexual responsibility.

If there's one government agency really looking forward to Dec. 22, it's NASA. The space agency said it has been flooded with calls and emails from people asking about the purported end of the world - which, as the doomsday myth goes, is apparently set to take place Friday, Dec. 21. The myth might have originated with the Maya calendar, but in the age of the Internet and social media, it proliferated online, raising questions and concerns among...

Science a la Mode: Physical Fashions and Fictions by Tony Rothman (Princeton University Press: $19.95; 207 pages) Science is based on the assumption that there is an objective truth in the world out there that scientists can get closer and closer to through experiment, observation and thought. Scientific truths are therefore not like hemlines, which go up and down with the season and whose truth is socially constructed, a matter of consensus. The "objective truth" model is an ideal, and we feel it in our bones, but no one can prove whether it is accurate or not. There is also an irreducible element of referendum to truth.

Following a hoax post that went viral, Facebook has reassured its users that they, not the company, own the copyright to the content they post on the social network. This weekend, a number of users on the site began re-posting the viral status update proclaiming that users, not Facebook, own the copyrights to their content. The viral post implies that Facebook owns the copyright. "In response to the new Facebook guidelines I hereby declare that my copyright is attached to all of my personal details," the viral post says.

I was amused to read Susan Takacs' letter (Letters in Life & Style, June 23) debunking e-mail as not having the class or warmth of regular mail. Nine months ago through the Internet I made the acquaintance of a gentleman from Singapore and two gentlemen from Vancouver, Canada. My correspondence with these three lacked none of the warmth Takacs finds only in regular mail. In fact, at the beginning of May, the Singaporean came to visit me for a week and stayed in my home. At the end of May, I went to Vancouver to visit my friends there, and had a wonderful vacation.

Big Foot Talks. Gentle beast is like a 5-yr.-old child!! --Weekly World News Savage space aliens are stalking the skies and methodically picking off America's top entertainers--one by one--as they take to the air --National Examiner Tormented ghost of doomed pilot haunts airport hotel --National Enquirer For a nation that prides itself on its scientific prowess, the pseudoscientific world of supermarket tabloids casts a surprisingly intoxicating spell.

Contrary to legend, Alfred Hitchcock did not behave like a "sadist" toward Kim Novak while filming her jump into San Francisco Bay for "Vertigo," as was reported by Kenneth Turan ("Still a Dizzying Experience," Oct. 13). The script supervisor's daily reports on the filming, preserved among Hitchcock's papers at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library, throw cold water on Turan's claim that Hitchcock took "revenge" on Novak by "insisting on multiple retakes (one estimate is 24)

If The Times is going to write about the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, please don't waste precious manpower and newsprint on another puff piece like "California Operations Put a Face on Minority Gains at DEA" (March 23). There are many pressing issues to write about; e.g., the DEA's ungodly $19.2-billion budget and its ideology-inspired crusade against medical marijuana. And besides, we already know why the DEA is hiring minorities: It makes it easier to bust minorities and continue filling our prisons with nonviolent drug offenders.

Merv Grazinski set his Winnebago on cruise control, slid away from the wheel and went back to fix a cup of coffee. You can guess what happened next: The rudderless, driverless Winnebago crashed. Grazinski blamed the manufacturer for not warning against such a maneuver in the owner's manual. He sued and won $1.75 million. His jackpot would seem to erase any doubt that the legal system has lost its mind.

Perhaps it's only appropriate that an antidote to the urban legend comes from the suburbs--Agoura Hills, to be precise. It is out of their home at the western end of the San Fernando Valley that David and Barbara Mikkelson track down the origins of tales of impossible tragedy, irony and revenge. More often than not, the Mikkelsons said, a little double-checking is all it takes to debunk a legend told and retold as "verifiable truth."

By now, most Americans who take their civic responsibilities seriously have no doubt seen, or at least heard about, Mitt Romney's peculiar approach to broad-based voter outreach. We're referring, of course, to his videotaped fundraising speech in Florida, in which he characterizes 47% of the American public as people who are "dependent on the government," who "pay no income tax" and who can't be convinced to "take personal responsibility and care for their lives. " Voters can decide for themselves whether Romney's words, taken at face value, bespeak a hopelessly crabbed approach to government's role in our lives or a principled stand for private enterprise and economic freedom.

All supernatural thrillers spring from the idea that there are things about the human spirit we just can't understand. But an excessively tangled plot can drain all the color from that essential mystery. That's the chief problem with "The Awakening," a quiet, unassuming little ghost story, set in England in the early 1920s, that's ultimately more complicated than it needs to be. Rebecca Hall plays Florence Cathcart, a distinguished author who specializes in debunking supernatural hoaxes.

"Freshman 15," "Freshman 15"… how often do you read that stat about weight gain during that first year of college, and how often do you wonder if it's true? Two researchers - one at Ohio State University and the other at the University of Michigan at Dearborn  -- decided to take a thorough look. In a study to be published in the December issue of the journal Social Science Quarterly, they report that… .. drumroll .. ..it's not true. It's a myth.  Weight gain among freshman students is far less than 15 pounds, as a rule - more like three pounds.

Michael Jackson's personal physician probably gave his patient 40 times more surgical anesthetic than he admitted to police, a drug expert testified Thursday. Anesthesiologist Steven Shafer also said Dr. Conrad Murray had the drug flowing into the singer's veins even as his heart stopped beating. The testimony is the most direct refutation yet of Murray's account of what happened in the hours leading up to the pop star's death. FULL COVERAGE: The Conrad Murray trial Shafer, a Columbia University professor, said mathematical modeling based on levels of propofol found in Jackson's body debunked Murray's statement that he had given the singer a single 25-milligram dose of the drug shortly before his death.

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything David Bellos Faber & Faber: 384 pp, $27 When it was announced that the 2011 Nobel Prize in literature was going to Tomas Tranströmer, Americans could be forgiven for not immediately recognizing the name of the 80-year-old Swedish poet. His most recent U.S. books come from two niche independent presses - New Directions and Green Integer - and his only collection with a major American publisher is out of print (Ecco, a division of HarperCollins, has announced it will be reissued)

The great whites stopped nosing around the boat, but they were still out there. The captain could see them on his depth finder, on the bottom more than 200 feet below. On the dive platform, William Winram strapped on a low-volume mask and long-blade fins, as did his two friends. Tall and wiry, with cool, narrow-set eyes and sandy-blond hair flecked with gray, Winram is a champion free-diver, capable of holding his breath for eight minutes. He once stroked to a depth of 295 feet and back without oxygen or fins.

What is a ghost? A disembodied spirit or just the product of a troubled mind? Does it matter? It does for paranormal investigators, whether they're William James and the American Society of Psychical Research or the team on Syfy Channel's "Ghosthunters. " Ghostly phenomena have to be measurable to be taken seriously ? a hallucination just won't cut it. Investigators devote their lives to finding "reliable" data. (For an entertaining recent view on all this, check out Gregory Lewis' post "Why I Don't Believe in Ghosts" on searchwarp.

If you choose to live in a way-out suburban subdivision, are you more likely to get fat? A number of planners, health officials and others have complained in recent years that sprawl discourages walking and, therefore, encourages obesity. But two researchers from Oregon State University looked at the relationship between sprawl and neighborhood choice, based on residents' weight. They concluded there's no real connection between living in the boonies and becoming overweight.

When it comes to real estate, all is not always as it seems. Many buyers — and some sellers — labor under misconceptions that could sink their housing aspirations. Take the notion that you will hunt for a house until you find the "perfect" one. Sorry. There is no such thing as the perfect house. Even gently used houses come with blemishes. And new homes rarely, if ever, have absolutely everything you want at the price you want to spend. Another popular myth is that the longer a house is on the market, the more willing the seller will be to negotiate.

People fear foreclosure almost as much as they fear death. But unlike death, foreclosure can be prevented. Unfortunately, just as some people ignore an illness' symptoms in hopes that it will just go away, some troubled owners are afraid to confront their problems and take the necessary actions to save their homes. But with so much misinformation flying about, who can blame them? Here are some common responses and misconceptions. Dread : "If I tell the mortgage company I'm having a problem, it will speed up the foreclosure process.