An Urban Legend Called: “The 7/38/55 Ratio Rule”

Discharge before noon: an urban legend.

Truth or Urban Legend?

It has become widely accepted that correlations between variables measured with the same method, usually self-report surveys, are inflated due to the action of common method variance (CMV), despite a number of sources that suggest the problem is overstated. The author argues that the popular position suggesting CMV automatically affects variables measured with the same method is a distortion an...

Uterine structural anomalies and arthrogryposis-death of an urban legend.

In a review of 2,300 cases of arthrogryposis collected over the last 35 years, 33 cases of maternal uterine structural anomalies were identified (1.3%). These cases of arthrogryposis represent a very heterogeneous group of types of arthrogryposis. Over half of individuals affected with arthrogryposis demonstrated asymmetry and some responded to removal of constraint, 29 of the 33 cases of arthr...

No Retinal Efference in Humans: an Urban Legend

Visual attention involves the selective processing of sensory information. Animal model systems long ago demonstrated that such selectivity may be mediated by efferents that proceed from the brain to the eye in order to influence afferent input to the brain. However, such a mechanism seems to be absent from the literature on human visual attention. We here suggest that this omission is the resu...

Autism and MMR vaccination or thimerosal exposure: an urban legend?

form of a cautionary tale that is related or transmitted as if true.1 The tale is plausible enough to be believable and indeed is a type of modern folklore that represents the beliefs of ordinary people. Frequently, the legend addresses a vexing aspect of modern life and carries the moral message that new technologies may ultimately prove to be a hazard. Mass media, including the internet, may ...