Not so. It was Josh Billings, pen name of Henry Wheeler Shaw.

Bill Scott


>>> "Marc Carter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 08/27/08 4:15 PM >>>

According to Gilovich, it's Artemus Ward .

"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble.
It's the things we know that just ain't so."


------
"[F]aculty have an obligation to the students collectively to prescribe
a required course of study designed specifically for liberal education
that is comprehensive, coherent, and rigorous."
--
Jerry L. Martin

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Palij [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 2:46 PM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Cc: Michael Palij
Subject: RE: [tips] why psychology is hard

On Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:41:25 -0700, Jim Clark wrote:
>Hi
>
>Are we sure that psychology is hard?  Or, to be more precise, harder 
>than other intro level courses?

I don't know what data there is on this point but in addition to the
general academic "skills building" in the article, implicit is the
notion that people walk into intro psych classes with a "folk
psychology"
that leads them to think that they (a) know what psychology is about and
(b) rely upon their understanding to guide them in interpreting
psychological research, theories, and explanations.
"Folk biology", "folk physics", and other "commonsense explanations"
about the world will tend to get challenged in high school science
courses which should make the college intro courses in those areas less
susceptible to this form of "proactive interference effect".

This led me to think of the following quote:

"It's not what we don't know that hurts us, it's what we know that isn't
so."

It then dawned on me that I didn't really know who the source was for
this.  I had taught that it was Mark Twain but a check of a couple of
Twain quote websites doesn't include it (though there are some websites
that quote Twain as saying it).  I have also see it attributed to Will
Rogers and Milton Erikson as well as to no one in particular (i.e., "the
old adage").  

So, who is the source?

-Mike Palij
New York University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

P.S.  Apparently there are a couple of versions of this saying, so the
one above may not be accurate.


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