Many magicians have specifically stated that people have reported seeing things in their act that they didn't do. James (The Amazing) Randi tells one such story:
Many years back, I appeared on the NBC-TV Today Show doing a "survival" stunt in which I was sealed into a metal coffin in a swimming pool in an admitted and since-regretted attempt to out-do Harry Houdini, who had performed the stunt at the same location back in 1926. Yes, I beat his time, but I was much younger than he had been when he performed it. I had listened to an agent who assured me that this was the way to go. I have been ever since trying to forget my disrespect for Houdini. But this digression is not pertinent to the main story here.
A week following that TV show, I was standing out on Fifth Avenue in a pouring rain, supervising through a window the arrangement of a display of handcuffs and other paraphernalia that I'd loaned to a bank for an eye-catching advertisement. My raincoat collar was up about my ears, and I could thus not be easily recognized. I was astonished when an NBC director, Paul Cunningham, who had been in charge of my swimming-pool appearance, happened by. We were adjacent to the NBC studios, and he had been on his way to work. Not noticing me, but seeing my name on the bank- window display, he began excitedly describing to his companion how I had been handcuffed, wrapped in a strait-jacket, and sealed into the coffin before being submerged, on his show. "And he was free and at the surface within minutes!" he exclaimed.
With a certain small show of drama, I identified myself. Paul was ecstatic, and invited me to join them for coffee. There, while we warmed ourselves over java, I explained to him that he had unwittingly provided his listener with a description that was not only untrue, but impossible. I told him that no handcuffs nor straitjacket had been involved at all in that event, and that he was mixing up his memories of previous shows with the one he had directed. In addition, I pointed out, it is impossible to place a straitjacket on a person who is handcuffed; this is a topological paradox. In addition, I'd not made an escape from the coffin, nor had that been the stunt: I was merely surviving on a limited amount of air, and I was able to climb from the coffin when it was brought to the surface. Cunningham's version was dramatic, but simply very wrong.
We're all familiar with false popular memes that spread faster than they can be stomped out: You only use 10% of your brain. Al Gore said he invented the internet. Perhaps it doesn't surprise you that some memes in popular culture can't be killed. But does the same thing happen in science?
Most of you have probably heard of Broca's aphasia and Wernicke's aphasia. Every textbook and every college course on language and the brain describes the connection between damage to these areas, and the speech deficits named after them.
Also, both are probably wrong. Both areas were mistakenly associated with their aphasias because they are near or surrounded by other areas which, when damaged, cause the aphasias. Yet our schools continue teaching the traditional, erroneous story; including a lecture in 9.14 at MIT given in 2005. Both the Wikipedia entry on Wernicke's aphasia and the Wikipedia entry on Broca's aphasia are still in error; the Wikipedia entry on Wernicke's area has got it straight.
Is it because this information is considered unimportant? Hardly; it's probably the only functional association you will find in every course and every book on the brain.
Is it because the information is too new to have penetrated the field? No; see the dates on the references below.
In spite of this failure in education, are the experts thoroughly familiar with this information? Possibly not; this 2006 paper on Broca's area by a renowned expert does not mention it. (In its defense, it references many other studies in which damage to Broca's area is associated with language deficits.)
So:
References
Bogen JE, Bogen GM (1976). Wernicke's region—Where is it? Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 280: 834–43.
Dronkers, N. F., Shapiro, J. K., Redfern, B., & Knight, R. T. (1992). The role of Broca’s area in Broca’s aphasia.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 14, 52–53.
Dronkers NF., Redfern B B., Knight R T. (2000). The neural architecture of language disorders. in Bizzi, Emilio; Gazzaniga, Michael S.. The New cognitive neurosciences (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp. 949–58.
Dronkers et al. (2004). Lesion analysis of the brain areas involved in language comprehension. Cognition 92: 145-177.
Mohr, J. P. (1976). Broca’s area and Broca’s aphasia. In H. Whitaker, Studies in neurolinguistics, New York: Academic Press.