• Similarly, the nonsense that GMO is an inherently dangerous technology is a political badge of honour in political groups that are dishonouring themselves by putting belief ahead of reality. The fundamental safety of GMO technology is proven. Particular GMOs may be dubious, but that’s not the problem with the technology itself.
• Belief in, or promulgation of, mass conspiracy theories. A mass conspiracy is a narrative device. Narrative is good for describing events, not because it reflects reality, but because of the way the human mind is wired. Mass conspiracy per se contradicts human nature, and thus cannot exist. Far worse, it is very difficult to promulgate a mass conspiracy theory without being a bigot, because, to believe it, you have to believe those committing the mass conspiracy are not fully human. Incidentally, this is my opinion, not something backed up by research, so far as I know.
• Belief in scams (supplementary, complementary and alternative medicine), such as acupuncture, homeopathy, etc.; the list seems endless. The facts are here.
• Being too immature to say “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake”.

But there’s an interesting wrinkle to all of this. It seems nonsense canaries can be culturally dependent. The original research which revealed the nonsense about vitamin C was conducted in the 1970s, but that only showed there was no significant short term benefit, so it said nothing about daily supplementation. The long term research demolishing the wishful thinking about vitamin C was published more recently.

This research was published in the English language world. The francophone advice still appears to be to give a daily supplement. So you can’t use this canary on a francophone ‘expert’, because francophone expert opinion differs to the anglophone. Unsurprisingly, I accept the anglophone, more because of empiricism. Probably it’s simply that the francophone advice hasn’t caught up with the research.

In other words, the vitamin C nonsense canary cannot be used with francophones because the expert advice is different. Furthermore, it means that nonsense canaries in general may have cultural aspects, so they should be used more carefully in multicultural contexts.