[HN Gopher] The appendix is not, in fact, useless
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       The appendix is not, in fact, useless
        
       Author : Digit-Al
       Score  : 33 points
       Date   : 2024-02-07 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
        
       | SuperNinKenDo wrote:
       | Even when I was a kid they were starting to understand this. I'm
       | old enough to remember people believing it was useless, maybe
       | even I was told it from a figure of authority at some point, but
       | definitely as a child my memory was "people used to think it was
       | useless, but now we know it isn't ".
       | 
       | It's kind if interesting to me that I continually see stories
       | titled like the article over the years. It goes to show that
       | undoing incorrect common knowledge is a long process that isn't
       | really ever completed, because an editor somewhere decided that a
       | title like this would grab people's attention, but to someone
       | like me, this is like a headline that reads "brushing your teeth
       | confirmed to be effective treatment in fighting tooth decay".
       | 
       | I've noticed a surge in articles letting me know that the
       | appendix isn't useless, so I assume we figured out a bit better
       | what it actually does, but to me the most interesting part is
       | about knowledge dissemination.
        
         | Talanes wrote:
         | I had a similar thing with whether Giant Pandas were actual
         | bears or not when I was a kid. The genetic tests that
         | determined they were definitely bears happened five years
         | before I was born, but I still got taught the "We used to think
         | they were bears, but they're actually more closely related to
         | raccoons" version until high school.
        
       | RandomLensman wrote:
       | Appendicitis was around in ancient times, too, so I am not sure I
       | understand the reference only to industrialized nations in that
       | respect.
        
         | readthenotes1 wrote:
         | "Appendicitis is predominantly happening in the industrialized
         | nations of the world -- areas where fiber content of the diet
         | tends to be lower. "
         | 
         | I saw it as a reference to fiber poor diets....
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | It doesn't say "only", it said "predominantly" and "more
         | likely".
        
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