File under the heading...................

.............of half the facts you know are wrong.  

Reason.com offers this essay pointing to Samuel Arbesman's,  new book The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date. Arbesman suggests that all those precious facts we memorized in school may, in fact, not be facts.  I'm crushed.  Dinosaurs were not coldblooded?  Miss Bell misled me?  As much as that revelation hurt, the author then gets personal:

"The Web is great for finding an up-to-date list of the 10 biggest cities in the United States, but if the scientific literature is littered with wrong facts, then cyberspace is an enticing quagmire of falsehoods, propaganda, and just plain bunkum."

I do like this conclusion, however:

"There simply is no substitute for skepticism."

thanks craig