The practice of applying the dock to the nettle sting has apparently grown out of parents trying to calm young children who have been stung, seeking out something close to hand to solve the problem. Fascinatingly there is absolutely no scientific evidence to show that anything in a dock leaf neutralises the sting – nothing above the anecdotal has been proven. I will not postulate on what happens when a person rubs a sting with a dock leaf, but common belief is that it helps. Perhaps the mind in this case is powerful enough to make this myth true.Another example. Body Mass Index (BMI) is a scale used to estimate a healthy weight for a person based on their height. Dieticians and many medical professionals use this scale to help gauge a person’s overall state of well-being. A person’s weight in kilos is divided by the square of their height in metres to calculate the figure. The cut-off for a healthy weight is a BMI 25. It is true that some forms of heart disease can be linked to higher BMIs but a recent study of 33,000 adults have shown that life expectancy reaches a maximum at levels far higher than the supposed BMI of 22. Life expectancy is at its highest for men at 26 and at 23.5 for women.According to current standards, this level for men is considered overweight. This belief is fairly prevalent, and those interested in fitness and their diet may actually be doing themselves more harm than good in the long run simply because they are adhering to what is presented as the ideal.A certain level of trust in authority figures is required as we go about our daily lives but as we can see from BMI, questions should always be asked. In 1958 an Oscar-winning documentary by Disney entitled White Wilderness depicted a large group of lemmings partaking in natural behaviour by scampering of cliffs. Once committed to film, this long standing myth was given a visual backbone, and has become a commonly-held belief. The truth is that lemmings don’t commit suicide: the lemmings in the movie were actually launched off the cliff for use in the documentary.Some of the strangest things in nature and indeed the universe seem almost impossible to believe, seemingly more like works of fiction than that of reality. Indeed, the first scientists to document the duck-billed platypus thought it so bizarre as to be a hoax – an animal stitched together from many specimens.Perhaps the best mantra to keep in mind when dealing with any story or situation though is that known as Occam’s Razor, which states that “the simplest solution is usually the correct one.”