The reason a myth outlives its explanation

The correction is published, accurate and widely reported. Ten years later the original story is still in circulation and the correction is not, because retelling the story takes one sentence and retelling the correction takes the story plus three qualifications.

What everyone sees

A false story is expected to die when refuted, on the assumption that transmission is driven by belief. Transmission is driven by transmissibility. A story survives if it is easy to recall and easy to repeat, and neither property is affected by whether it is true.

What is actually happening

Sperber’s epidemiological account of cultural representations argues that the distribution of ideas is explained by what makes them easy to acquire, store and transmit, not by their accuracy or their utility to believers. Norenzayan, Atran, Faulkner and Schaller tested a specific prediction of that framework, finding that narratives containing a small number of minimally counterintuitive elements were recalled and retransmitted better than either wholly intuitive or heavily counterintuitive ones — giving a structural profile that memorable myths tend to satisfy. A correction cannot satisfy it, since it is parasitic on the myth for its own intelligibility and adds qualifications that raise transmission cost. The myth therefore does not defeat the correction. It out-reproduces it.

Why it stays hidden

The asymmetry hides because the correction wins in every forum where accuracy is scored. It is published in the more authoritative venue, cited in the record and treated as settled by anyone who checks. Its failure is in a channel nobody audits: casual retelling between people who are not checking anything.