For example, when I was learning about WW2 in high school just under a decade ago, I was taught that the movie "Enemy at the Gates" was essentially true, where each man would get ammo or a rifle but not both. I came here and eventually found out that "Enemy at the Gates" is a pretty bad film and very inaccurate.
Now, whenever I lurk around this subreddit or a military subreddit, it seems that everyone knows that Enemy at the Gates is not true and that the Soviets were able to give every man a gun.
Other things I have also been taught but was proved wrong by this subreddit and the other "serious" history subreddit completely contradicts what is available on the r/history subreddit. Just a week ago, I saw a couple of users on r/history claim that Chiang Kai-Sheik surrendered in WW2, when Chongqing was never even captured!
So, how long does it take for serious historians such as /r/AskHistorians to dispel bad historical takes? And how do you guys dispel these takes?
We can yap away all we want here, but usually that doesn't result in myths disappearing. To take some topics I've posted on here:
Here's a piece from Deutsche Welle in October 2021 claiming that Schliemann 'discovered' Troy.
Here's an article from July 2022, another from FAQ-blog.com in May 2022, and another from LibreTexts in May 2022 (written by a professor at American University, no less), claiming that Roman soldiers were paid in salt. The American University professor also claims that 'Historically, salt was a prestigious commodity'/.
Here's the World History Encyclopedia in March 2022, History Daily in July 2022, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in September 2021 claiming that Eratosthenes discovered the earth is round after hearing about a well in Syene.
Here's a July 2022 article on Investopedia claiming that the golden ratio is found in nature and was the basis for the proportions of the Parthenon and the Mona Lisa. Here's an article in a peer-reviewed medical journal from July 2022 making more limited claims along similar lines.
Wait for December to roll around and I guarantee you'll see people on social media still claiming that Christmas is a remodelled version of Saturnalia or a supposed Yule festival.
Similarly, I doubt we'll ever see the tail-end of searches for where Atlantis was. (The interest in Atlantis in the present day is in most ways a by-product of 18th-19th century theories of ethnic nationalism; in earlier periods it's been motivated by other things.)
Rather than dwell on these sad situations, allow me to share the one significant success story I've had. It's a success because it's the one situation where I was able to directly approach the source of the misinformation, and they were good-faith actors and promptly stopped propagating it in a matter of days.
Up until August last year, the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature explained the names of the planets in the solar system by referring to the qualities of the Roman gods associated with them. Mercury was named after a god of speed because it moves fast, Jupiter after the king of the gods because it's the biggest planet, and so on. All of them were outright false, but they've been repeated ad nauseam all over the place. Up until last year, when someone was confronted with a lack of evidence for the historicity of these explanations, they could simply say 'The IAU says so'. People have done this even on /r/AskHistorians.
Then I wrote a piece (offsite) dispelling the myth, and it got some attention. Someone recommended that I write directly to the committee responsible, so I did, and they promptly deleted the misinformation. (They weren't interested in my input in terms of providing new accurate information, but they're not obligated to.)
The misinformation is still out there, and no doubt will continue to permeate public consciousness for a long time yet. But at least now no one can say 'But the IAU says so.' So maybe it'll dissipate over the decades to come.
Unfortunately, for most myths of this kind, that approach isn't possible. No one can dispel the story about Eratosthenes discovering the shape of the earth, because that comes from Carl Sagan, and he's dead now. The one about the golden ratio comes from a 1959 Donald Duck cartoon, and I don't think we're going to be able to persuade Disney to issue a new cartoon to correct the mistake.
Even when the original source of misinformation is discredited and/or removed, it can take a looooong time for the myth to dissipate. The one about salt has been dissipating since the start of the 1900s; it was caused by bad entries in Latin-English dictionaries in the 1700s and 1800s, and the new standard Latin-English dictionary removed the misinformation in 1968 (the Oxford Latin Dictionary). But that was over 50 years ago, and it's still floating around. The one about Christmas was based on 19th century naturalistic interpretations of myth, and no scholarly discussion has made a case for it since around 1930, which is over 90 years ago now. Yet I don't think we're going to see the end of that one for a long, long time.
I think the only reliable way to repair the damage is for the correct information to be disseminated, and to hit it big -- it has to make it into a summer blockbuster, or go viral some other way. Unfortunately, it isn't easy to manufacture viral marketing.