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I’m talking about widely held beliefs that are perceived to be rooted in science or what is falsely believed to be rooted in science, but are perhaps overgeneralized or taken out of context to the point they are pseudoscientific.

Things like:

Birds/rabbits will reject their young if they smell that a human touched them.

The human body isn’t designed to drink cow’s milk and it’s bad for you

“Chinese restaurant syndrome” due to MSG

Boiling water in the microwave is somehow worse or more dangerous than using a kettle.

Gluten is bad for you, widespread belief in gluten sensitivity

Cellphones can cause cancer due to radiation they emit.

Swimming right after you eat can be dangerous

Any amount of chocolate or grapes/raisins are ‘poisonous’ to dogs

Conor Henry
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  • 'Folk science' is close, but 'is a term used in psychology and anthropology to describe systems of knowledge about the workings of the natural world that are not based on the scientific method, often relying instead on either intuition or empiricism in its crudest form.' [RationalWiki], but there is no stipulation here that these systems of knowledge must be wrong. – Edwin Ashworth May 15 '20 at 18:18
  • Perhaps meme is relevant – a true or false idea that spreads. – Weather Vane May 15 '20 at 19:44
  • I've close-voted as the answers echof the answers to the more general question of the title. – Edwin Ashworth May 16 '20 at 16:28
  • Why not just use the word pseudoscientific, which appears within the question itself? – jsw29 May 16 '20 at 23:16

3 Answers3

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OED

Myth 2.a. A widespread but untrue or erroneous story or belief; a widely held misconception; a misrepresentation of the truth.

1911 Encycl. Brit. XV. 593/1 The jus [sc. the jus primae noctis or droit du seigneur], it seems, is a myth, invented no earlier than the 16th or 17th century.

1973 Times 13 Nov. 6/6 There is a myth going around that there are an awful lot of empty houses in Windsor Great Park.

1997 Guardian 9 June i. 4/3 The researchers suggest women who claim to be suffering from PMS are instead affected by random depression... PMS, they conclude, is a myth.

Community
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Greybeard
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How about folklore? From M-W:

folklore: an often unsupported notion, story, or saying that is widely circulated, e.g., the folklore about the health risks of computers

Keys here are widely circulated and often but not necessarily unsupported.

Richard Kayser
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A supernatural fear or belief is the fear of or belief in something that's not of this world.

A fear of or belief in something that is of this world, but which isn't supported by fact, or is supported only be an emotional reaction, is an irrational fear or belief.

[Merriam-Webster]
1 : not rational: such as
a (1) : lacking usual or normal mental clarity or coherence
a (2) : not endowed with reason or understanding
b : not governed by or according to reason
     // irrational fears

So, depending on how you negatively react to the prospect of drinking cow's milk "because it's bad for you," you're expressing an irrational fear or belief.

Jason Bassford
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  • People who believe such things are indeed less than perfectly rational, but they are not irrational in the same way as those who have phobias, and they are not driven solely by emotions. Irrational thus may be too broad a term for what the OP has in mind. The examples that appear in the question are scientific in form, and those who believe them can typically produce some reasons for them; it's just that they don't sufficiently well evaluate the available evidence, and don't carefully weigh it against the evidence for the opposite views. – jsw29 May 16 '20 at 17:42