- Sep 2, 2009
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Oh dear! My mischievous prank seems to have been rumbled.
People will believe anything that they want to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary. I have an example.
I was working in an office a couple of years ago and overheard some young ladies discussing 'Spontaneous Human Combustion' (SHC). They were looking at a website on the subject and were all agreeing that this was indeed a strange and unexplained 'phenomena'. In other words they believed in what they read on the website and that SHC was indeed a true fact.
I joined their conversation and explained that this was in fact an old urban myth. I also explained how I knew it was such. No, not because I read it on the internet, that universal source of so much information both true and untrue. It was because as a SOCO, not only had I examined many scenes where a person had burned to death in a room that was not itself completely consumed by fire, but I was also a qualified fire investigator, having attended courses including the advanced fire investigation course at the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh. By the way the SHC myth is discussed at these courses and the true science behind these types of fire deaths is well known and documented.
Anyway they were not convinced because they had read on the website that it was a real phenomenon - they believed, that for no apparent reason, people can simply burst into flames!
I then pointed out to one of the young ladies that the popular American TV series Mythbusters had done an item on it with all the appropriate experiments. Before I could finish my sentence the young lady interjected excitedly, "Yes, I saw that programme and they proved it was true!"
In actual fact the Mythbusters' verdict was 'Myth Busted' i.e. the myth was not true, SHC did not exist! The young lady however had completely turned the facts around and had remembered it as she WANTED to remember it.
At this point I decided that my time was best spent getting on with what I was supposed to be doing.
So, not matter how many threads there are on MHF, no matter how illogical and daft the very idea of 'gassing' is, those who believe will continue to do so.
I hope I am forgiven for my little prank.
KH
Eye lad...Nowt as queer as folk
(but in your example she sounds a real thicko)