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Comment by celoyd | Hacker News Reader

> The environmentalist threw a fit about this "glue" and it was replaced with a glue that all the engineers said was not as safe, in regards to the tiles staying attached...

This is a common myth. It’s false: http://mediamatters.org/research/2005/08/09/limbaugh-promote...

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This is a great telling of the myth though: http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2003/09/01/did-e...

Reading a false story is dangerous -- the mind tends to remember the story, and forget the "It's a myth" part over time.

This is also why "Myth vs Facts" or sarcastic "How to do X Very Wrong" articles are bad style -- they undermine the goal. Better to write using language that affirms the truth, not multiple negations.

> the mind tends to remember the story, and forget the "It's a myth" part over time.

I find the opposite to be true. Once I've identified something I thought to be once true was in fact misleading/wrong/a myth, it seems to be forever stamped as a falsehood in my brain. Likewise when I know going into it reading it that it is a myth/false.

Ah, thanks. I was looking for it. I deleted the main comment because I didn't want a conspiracy war breaking out lol.

But everywhere I did read, the tiles have been a plague on the Orbiter since day 1. And of course the man hours needed to change them was crazy.

That part is true. Orbiters would routinely come back with broken or missing tiles. Fortunately it was robust enough to withstand a few missing.

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