The title may be a little bit misleading, because
this problem is not only limited to Nigerian
schools. It’s a worldwide phenomenon
occasioned by teachers, lecturers and
instructors who make no effort to update
themselves and add to what they already
know. These lies – at least some of them –
were facts at some point in time, but things
have since moved on.
Truths
become lies as new discoveries are being made.
Here are 16 lies that are still dished out the world
over even as you read this:
There are six classes of food : I was taught – and I
know most of you were taught – that there are 6
classes of food, namely, proteins, carbohydrates,
vitamins, fats and oil, minerals and water. It is no
longer the case. Officially, there are
now SEVEN classes of food: proteins,
carbohydrates, vitamins (or vegetables), fibers, fats
and oil, minerals and water. Fiber is derived from
plants and it was initially left out by nutritionists
because it seemingly does not add any nutrient to the
body. What fiber does that it alters the way our
gastrointestinal tract absorbs food. Fiber itself is
indigestible; it is broken down in the large intestine
not by the body’s digestive system, but by the trillions
of bacteria that live there.
There are nine planets in the solar
system: Astronomers are regularly discovering new
planets all over the universe. However, the number
of planets in our own solar system has been reduced
from nine to eight. This is due to the declassification
of Pluto as a planet. Pluto was officially
downgraded by astronomers at the 26th General
Assembly of the International Astronomical Union
which was held in Prague, Czech Republic, in
2006. It is now a dwarf planet. Astronomers
found out that it is merely a huge ball of ice and
rock orbiting the Sun in an area known as the
Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is located beyond
the planet Neptune (which is now the farthest planet
in the solar system) and it contains over 70,000 icy
objects similar to Pluto. Pluto happens to be one of
the biggest of these icy objects, but it’s not the biggest.
The biggest is Eris. Eris, a dwarf planet, is the
largest object in the Kuiper Belt. It’s about 25%
more massive than Pluto.
There are four oceans : That was until the year
2000 when the International Hydrographic
Organization concluded that a distinct body of sea
that completely surrounds the continent Antarctica
will be the Earth’s fifth ocean. The exact
geographic coordinates of the salty water are yet to
be agreed upon, but most sources will tell you that it
lies to the south of Australia, New Zealand and the
tip of the South American continent.
There are three states of matte r: There are several
states of matter, in fact. According to physicists, in
addition to solid, liquid and gaseous, plasma can be
observed in everyday life. Actually, scientists claim
that plasma is the most abundant form of matter in
the universe, because most of the stars, including
our own Sun, are in a plasma state. Other states
of matter include the neutron-degenerate matter,
Bose-Einstein condensates, liquid crystals,
superfluids, quark-gluon plasmas, quantum hall
state, supersolid, string-net liquid, superglass and
dark matter. But these forms of matter are very
rare and some of them have not been observed, but
are believed to exist.
Humans have only five senses: It turns out that
sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste are not the
only sensory responses human beings exhibit.
Human sensory receptors can also respond to pain
(nociception), changes in temperature
(thermoception), changes in balance
(equilibrioception), position (proprioception),
magnetic direction (magnetoception) and the passage
of time (chronoception).
Humans evolved from apes : This is a great lie and
misconception that has been here with us since the
day Charles Darwin published his controversial
“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life.” According to this well-
known biological framework, human beings and the
modern-day apes evolved from a single, now-
extinct ancestor. As time passed by, these ancestors
of ours began to evolve differently based on climatic,
nutritional, geographical and social changes.
Mount Everest is the highest place on earth : Mount
Everest is the highest mountain in the world quite
alright, but it’s not the part of the world that is
closest to outer space. Here how it works: the
Earth does not have a perfectly round structure
like the world globes you’ll find in most schools.
Geographers call this anomaly an oblate spheroid,
which means that the earth has a bulge towards the
equator. As a result of this bulge, places close to the
equator are “further out” from the centre of the
Earth than places that are far away from it.
Ethiopia, Kenya, Gabon, Colombia, the
Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries
that straddle the equator are “further out” from the
centre of the Earth and are closer to outer space
than countries that lie towards the north and south
poles, such as the Scandinavian countries, Russia,
Canada, the United States and Greenland. Going
by this phenomenon, the title of the highest spot on
Earth belongs to a mountain in Ecuador that you
may not have heard of. The rather unspectacular
Mount Chimborazo in the Andes of South America
has been identified as the highest point on earth and
its closest part to outer space. The peak is in reality
1.5 miles “higher up” than Mount Everest because
it sits atop the Earth’s bulge, though it only
measures 20,564 ft from sea level, while Everest
measures 29,029 ft. But for the sake of clarity,
Everest is still the highest mountain in the world
from sea level, but if two objects are descending
from outer space from the same distance and at the
same pace to the two mountains, the one coming
down to Chimborazo will land before the one
descending to Everest. Everest is actually the fifth
furthest place from the centre of the Earth;
Huascaran in Peru, Cotopaxi in Ecuador,
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Chimborazo are all
further.
Babies are born tabula rasa : For ages, arguments
and counterarguments have been made by
psychologists and philosophers over whether human
beings are born with the so-called blank slate. But
thanks to advancements in genetic studies, most of us
are now in the know that humans transfer some of
their characteristics (known as traits) to their
offspring. These traits go a long way in determining
how the offspring will react when put in certain
situations and subjected to certain conditions.
Different parts of the tongue detect different
flavours: Even in my university days, I was taught
by professors that different parts of the human
tongue are specialized for detecting different tastes.
The so-called tongue map balkanized our taste
organ into areas responsible for detecting sweetness,
bitterness, saltiness, sourness and unami. Per
contra, it turns out that most taste buds on the
tongue and in other areas of the mouth can detect
any taste irrespective of their position.
Europeans brought Christianity to Africa and
Christianity is a Western Religion : Christianity is
the world’s largest religion and it originated from
Asia in the geographical East. The movement that
gave rise to Christianity was begun by Jesus Christ
who was born over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem in
present-day Palestine. The followers of the
teachings of Christ were first called “Christians” in
the town of Antioch which is now a historical site
in present-day Turkey. Antioch lies on the eastern
part of Turkey which is in Asia. It is not clear
when Christianity was brought to either Europe or
Africa. It is recorded in the Bible that Christ was
taken to Egypt as an infant by Mary and Joseph
who were fleeing from Herod the Great during the
Massacre of the Innocents. However, Christ’s
ministry began few years before He was crucified.
It is not recorded if He went to Africa or Europe
during His ministry. What is clear, though, is that
one of His apostles, Mark, established the first
church in Africa twelve years after the crucifixion,
known as the Church of Alexandria.
Some years before that, another apostle, Philip,
was recorded in the Acts of the Apostles to have
baptized an Ethiopian eunuch on the road leading to
Gaza from Jerusalem. The Acts, however, did not
tell us where the eunuch went afterwards or if he
spread the message in Ethiopia. A church was
established in Ethiopia some years after the Church
of Alexandria in Egypt and it is still in existence
today. Most present-day Ethiopians are Christians
and their own form of Christianity is not linked to
the ones spread by the Europeans.
The Bible, the Church and People in the Middle
Ages believed that the Earth was flat: According to
the notion – which has been erroneously published in
some textbooks – Christians in the Middle Ages
believed that the Earth was flat. The notion has it
that it was not until Genoese explorer, Christopher
Columbus, had “sailed round the world” without
falling off the Earth's presumed edge (and
“discovered” what turned out to be North America)
that the Church leaders came to the realization that
the Earth is indeed spherical and not flat. Contrary
to this view, Greek astronomers and pretty much
everyone else then knew long before the advent of
Christianity that the Earth was spherical. The
early Greeks were renowned astronomers who
made predictions that are still correct today. The
Bible also alluded to a spherical Earth. Isaiah
40:22 says that “He (God) sits enthroned above the
circle of the earth.” It was only a handful of
scholars in the Middle Ages who claimed to be
representing the whole Church that believed in a flat
Earth.
Michael Faraday invented electricity: No-one
actually invented electricity. The form of energy
now known as electricity has been there since the
beginning of the world. Electricity occurs in
nature. A lightning bolt, for example, releases
electricity.
Thomas Edison invented the light bulb: While it is
not clear who invented light bulbs, they were being
used as electric lights more than 50 years before
Thomas Edison patented his famous invention in
1879. What Edison invented was the world's first
commercially viable incandescent light bulb.
Diabetes is caused by sugar : Sugar doesn’t directly
cause diabetes, but if you consume too much sugar,
you are likely going to get diabetes. What sugar
does is that it increases the quantity of calories in
the body. Too many calories in the body lead to
weight gain which significantly increases a person’s
likelihood to develop type 2 diabetes.
The Whites kidnapped Africans and sold them into
slavery: This is not entirely true. Most slaves that
were shipped into the Americas to work in
plantations were actually captured by their own
kinsmen and sold to the Europeans. When it all
began, the Europeans were the ones doing the
kidnapping. They organized abduction raids to
capture slaves from different communities. But in
no time, they realized that it was too dangerous a
venture for them since they were not familiar with
the inland terrains. What did they do? They
subsequently found people that will do their dirty
jobs. Then came the local chiefs and the greedy
merchants. They were given this responsibility in
exchange for money and other privileges. At the
height of the slave trade, this practice became a
lucrative business along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast.
The United States of America is the world’s
largest economy : That was until 2014; October to
be precise. The US is still the richest country
when measured by reserves and collective national
wealth, but it no longer has the world's largest
economy, according to the International Monetary
Fund’s Gross Domestic Product Purchasing
Power Parity (GDP PPP) estimates. China is
now the world’s largest economy. In the IMF's
indices, China’s GDP is now worth $17.63 trillion
compared with the US’ $17.55 trillion. The IMF
makes its calculations based on purchasing power
parity, a measure which is preferred by most
economists. Purchasing power parity adjusts a
country’s GDP for inflation based on the fact that
the prices of goods and services as well as cost of
living vary from country to country. When not
measured based on purchasing power parity, the
United States is still the world’s number one
economy with a GDP of $16.8 trillion compared
to China’s $10.3 trillion.
The Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole,
has condemned the sale of honorary awards by some Nigerian universities
to individuals of “questionable character.”
