› added 11 years ago

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TIL that Andrew Wakefield’s study on vaccines causing Autism was debunked in 1999, and the paper he wrote on the subject was retracted in 2010!

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via reddit.com

rROpx TIL Walter Jackson Freeman II, creator of the "icepick" lobotomy, performed as many as 4,000 surgeries in 23 states despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training. Up to 40% of Freeman's patients were gay individuals subjected to a lobotomy in order to change their homosexual orientation.
yVrPw TIL that Sigmund Freud's theories inadvertently sparked a revolution in psychology; his ideas were seen (in many cases) as extremely outlandish and wrong, sparking a lot of psychologists to seek to prove them incorrect and revitalizing the field as a whole.
4X9dN TIL Long-eared hedgehogs are nocturnal mammals native to the arid deserts and steppes of Egypt through to Central Asia, where they typically live in burrows. Their ears are much larger than those of other species of hedgehogs and are considered an adaptation for heat radiation in desert climates.
GYajJ TIL for most people mosquito bites itch more at night because our cortisol levels are lower than in the morning and they are less distracted as they wind down for the night.
5YJbD TIL that in the early 20th century, giving birth at hospital was more dangerous than at home. Reasons appareantly include doctors not washing hands (gentelmen have clean hands), being undertrained and overusing unnecessary (and harmful) procedures just to look cooler than midwifes.