PART ONE

"The sun and planets revolve around the earth...
The suicidal lemming...
Tobacco smoking is not harmful... (While there was good reason to suspect that tobacco was harmful... there was no positive proof. Even after the tide had all but turned, many heavy smoking medical professionals behaved as though the lack of positive proof of harm meant it was safe. [T]obacco industry [did] their own studies. Probably many such studies were discarded for every one that was actually published. It wouldn’t be necessary to cook results. Just be selective in which studies saw the light of day)...
The average adult should drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day...
This may or may not be a fallacy. It is accepted as fact by nutritionists even though it has never been proven in a scientific experiment. Such an experiment would be very difficult to design and control."

The scary thing is "The influence of special interests on scientific proof is even more of a problem now than it was 50 years ago. More and more research institutions and scholarly journals get part of their funding from private industry. If a respectable journal receives a paper with good solid research, they will publish the paper even if they know it could annoy one of their financial supporters. But what about a flawed paper? Most research projects have minor flaws of one sort or another. I’m guessing that a flawed paper which makes a supporter unhappy is sure to be rejected. On the other hand, a flawed paper which benefits a supporter will be published."
http://home.cogeco.ca/~allan/fallacies.html

Have you ever accepted the answer "just because"? Have you made any assumptions about the world that may not be entirely true? Have you ever passed on information that was a little bit off? How can we be confident in what is the truth? What source do you rely on as your guiding light? Maybe no one has the answers... but I could be wrong, who knows?

Ages ago, the earth was commonly accepted as flat. It was taught in schools and was difficult to disprove. Now the opposite is taught and accepted. What's the difference between then and now? That we're right? They thought they were right. That we're relying on scientific evidence? Well, that we're relying on the scientific evidence of others? Teachers of that era believed in their sources at least as much as we do in ours. I, personally, believe the earth to be spherical based on the textbooks I have read, movies I have watched and pictures I have seen. Basing beliefs on evidence provided by others has proved faulty throughout history several times over. It seems true nonetheless. I see no flaws in the theory; it makes sense. However, making sense or following logic does not correlate to being factual. Two opposing statements can both make sense, even though one must be wrong. Trusting gut instincts is unreliable as well; they vary from person to person, culture to culture, generation to generation. Perhaps the truth varies in such a way. Is truth not constant? Is reality only a flicker of the moment? If things are constantly changing, how can we expect truth be a constant? If the truth is not stable, does it even exist?