Academic urban legends: a cautionary tale of how generations of researchers were misled by a misplaced decimal point User kzhou7, in the Slate Star Codex: In a Mad World, All Blogging is Psychiatry Blogging subreddit, 07 Aug 2022
"a decimal point error appears to have misled millions into believing that spinach is a good nutritional source of iron" User srid-, in the Science-Based Nutrition subreddit, 19 Jul 2020
"Academic urban legends" - A great article on primary and secondary sources and our practices of citing research User smoochie100, in the Scientific Research subreddit, 27 Jun 2017
"Many of the messages presented in respectable scientific publications are, in fact, based on various forms of rumors" User itisike, in the Slate Star Codex: In a Mad World, All Blogging is Psychiatry Blogging subreddit, 03 Jan 2016
TIL Terry Hamblin was responsible for accidentally propagating a myth about a misplaced decimal point as the reason for low amounts of iron in spinach. This lead to many miss-citations of his BMJ article. In reality, spinach has significant amounts of iron that are simply unavailable for absorption. User Fliperdo, in the Today I Learned (TIL) subreddit, 03 Nov 2015
How academic urban legends are born or Why you shouldn't always trust that reference. (repost, but I thought it fit here) User cygnosis, in the skeptic subreddit, 06 Aug 2014
Why people believe spinach is/is not a good source of iron. User shenglong, in the interesting subreddit, 06 Aug 2014