Right for the Wrong Reasons - Television Tropes & Idioms

See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum. And one night, they decide they don't like living in the asylum anymore. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away into the moonlight. Stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren't make the leap. Y'see... y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then the first guy has an idea... He says, "Hey, I have a flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me!" But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... he says "Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was halfway across!"

— The Joker, The Killing Joke

Someone makes a conclusion based on what he perceives are facts. His conclusion is correct, his logic is (usually) fine, but the facts themselves are wrong.

The Gettier Problem

is a well-known issue in epistemology that basically uses this scenario to mount an attack on the definition of "knowledge" as "justified, true belief" — a conclusion reached this way is justified and true, but intuitively we wouldn't call it knowledge.

Compare and contrast Framing the Guilty Party, where the facts are KNOWN to be false, but the conclusion is still correct. Also compare Conviction by Counterfactual Clue. Can sometimes overlap with Accidentally Accurate when it happens on a meta-level. Dismissing the conclusion because of erroneous facts would be the Fallacy Fallacy. When the premises and the conclusion are correct, but the logic connecting them is completely insane, you have a Bat Deduction. For the direct inverse, where the logic and premises are perfectly sound, but the conclusion isn't, see Entertainingly Wrong. May be a reason for Don't Shoot the Message.

Examples:

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Comic Books

In Detective Comics #373, "The Riddler On The Roof", Elongated Man visits Gotham while Batman's busy elsewhere, and Comissioner Gordon shows him the Riddler's latest clue. He stops the Riddler shortly before Batman, who has finished his own case and seen the clue, shows up. However, when they compare notes, they have completely different interpretations of what the riddle means, although they both connected it to the same crime. Basically, either Batman, Commissioner Gordon, or both were Right for the Wrong Reasons—and out of sheer spite, the Riddler won't say which.
The Killing Joke, as quoted, has an example of a crazy person achieving this, showing just how far the trope can go.
Watchmen
- Unlike everyone else who just thinks of him as a benevolent philanthropist, Rorschach is very suspicious of Veidt, which turns out to have been warranted. However, this is because Rorschach has some very fringe right-wing views, and so he naturally assumes the Ambiguously Gay and nice liberal guy must be up to something evil.
- After the Comedian is killed, Rorschach suspects that other superheroes will be targeted for murder from a "cape-killer." Sure enough, an attempt is made on Ozymandius's life. In reality, Ozymandius is behind it all. He killed the Comedian because he knew too much about Ozymandius's plans and sent an assassin against himself (after Rorschach shared his theory) to throw off suspicion.

Film

There was a massive scene in Hot Fuzz where Nick Angell accused Tim Dalton's shopkeeper character of committing the murders, complete with motives. He didn't identify the correct motives, and the shopkeeper had a watertight alibi, BUT - and it's a big but - in TWO twists, not only was he right all along with the shopkeeper being complicit with the murders, but he'd actually namechecked all of the REAL motives in passing over the course of his original speech. So it was right for the right reasons, and while he did acknowledge the right reasons, he didn't identify them as being the right reasons until the very climax. My brain hurts.
In Without A Clue. Holmes' (and Watson's) contrived method of solving the final clue turns out to be true, but the real solution is far simpler. To elaborate: Holmes and Watson read the final clue, a partial serial number (234) as being part of a kidnap victim's code. The victim's favourite book of the bible was the book of Psalms. Psalm 23, verse 4 leads them to a passage that referenced an In-Universe famous play: The Shadow Of Death, which played at a local theatre which was, in fact, where he was being held captive. Of course, 234 was also the address of the theatre, which was what the victim really intended.
In Star Trek, Kirk connects several events that have occurred as meaning the Narada is attacking Vulcan, and even Spock says his logic is sound. He's right, but his conclusions such as "lightning storm in space=Narada" are wrong (the lightning storm being Spock Prime coming through a black hole in this instance, which Kirk simply can't know of at this point).
- Bonus points for this being a double case. Kirk's desire to raise shields may be born out of his unwarranted certainty in his conclusion but the circumstantial evidence is enough to suggest that raising shields and proceeding with caution is still a good idea.
At the end of the Burn the Witch! scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it's revealed that the woman really is a witch, despite all the fabricated evidence and Insane Troll Logic the peasants have used against her. Also, when someone suggests making a bridge out of her to see if she's made of wood, he's shot down because bridges can be made of stone as well.
In The Princess Bride, Inigo is able to track down Westley when he hears his scream, and when questioned by Fezzik how he knows it's him, Inigo replies that it is the sound of ultimate suffering and he is the only one who could feel it that night due to his true love marrying another. Technically, it's because he was just tortured to almost-death.

Literature

Discworld:
- In Jingo, there's a Framing the Guilty Party of the "plant obvious clues against yourself to make it appear a frame" type, where the evidence they find is so stereotypically Klatchian that it's laughable. Colon and Nobby, naturally, conclude that since the evidence points to Klatchians, it must be Klatchians. Vimes, however, takes the "quality" of the evidence to mean someone in Ankh-Morpork is doing a bad job of framing the Klatchians for the attack. Later, he finds out it was Klatchians behind it, who deliberately faked the frame up because they knew Vimes would "see right through it".
- In the science sections of The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day, there's a footnote which humorously "explains" how you get from the Schr�dinger equation to Schr�dinger's Cat by combining two versions of the equation, one in which Ψ=A (for "alive") and one in which Ψ=D (for "dead"), and showing this leads to an equation where A=D. Any equation would do that, since you're starting by assuming A and D both equal Ψ.
In The Leaky Establishment by David Langford, Tappen has a Eureka Moment near the end when he connects the surprisingly high radioactivity of Roger Pell's home-made whiskey with a few other pieces of circumstantial evidence to conclude, correctly, that Pell has been pinching plutonium from work to create a nuclear reactor under his house. However, when he explains his chain of reasoning to Pell, Pell replies that the whiskey is carefully shielded from the reactor, but may have been made with pure ethanol stolen from a lab near the nuclear fuels store.
A story in Sideways Stories from Wayside School has a character who always comes up with the correct number when counting, albeit by counting completely random numbers (example: "three, ten, nineteen, sixty-four, five. The answer is five!"), lampshaded by the teacher's odd reaction (nodding, but saying "No"). When told to count "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten", he takes it to Literal Genie-level conclusions and counts all ten numbers regardless of the number of objects he's attempting to count, giving him "ten" for everything, resulting in him only counting right when he counts wrong and vice-versa, or something.
In the Wild Cards novel Inside Straight, Hardhat deduces that Noel Matthews's hidden superpower is shapeshifting because Noel was able to pass as an attractive woman during the exercise, and Hardhat would rather deal with Shapeshifting Squick than accept the Unsettling Gender Reveal. Noel really is a shapeshifter but was not in fact in a female form during the exercise. When informed of some of the facts, Hardhat drops his theory.
In Foucaults Pendulum during a discussion on the "four types of people in the world", this principle is lampshaded as the province of 'Morons'.
In Isard's Revenge, smuggler Talon Karrde visits the Errant Venture, the converted Star Destroyer belonging to ex-smuggler Booster Terrik. Terrik believes the visit is regarding one of Karrde's associates, Aves, getting his own ship. Terrik is absolutely correct about Aves getting a new ship (and also correctly identifying the ship he's getting), even spelling out his line of logic (which is partly based on the fact that Karrde came to his ship). Karrde's visit, however, has nothing to do with Aves or his new ship; instead, it concerns two functional astromechs from X-wings presumed destroyed, belonging to two people presumed dead. Specifically, the astromechs belonging to Wedge Antilles and Corran Horn. Karrde even invokes the name of the trope, saying "this is why you're dangerous Booster, you're right for all the wrong reasons."
Grand Admiral Thrawn makes a few of these. Thrawn's The Chessmaster and a Manipulative Bastard who is often magnificent, and usually he's spectacular at gauging what any given individual will do in response to the situation. As the trilogy goes on and unforseen events crop up with more regularity he starts being wrong about the why, but still right — until the end, when he's not.
This is basically Dirk Gently's standard operating procedure; it reaches its apex in the second book, when he spontaneously decides his client's death is someone else's fault simply so he can stop feeling guilty about it. It turns out to be directly her fault.
The ever-suspicious Efficient Baxter from P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle saga frequently takes the right course of action after drawing the wrong conclusion. For instance, he'll assume two characters are accomplices helping one another steal the same object, when in reality they're rivals trying to steal the same object, thieves-for-hire unaware that they were hired by the same employer, or unrelated thieves who don't decide to team up until Baxter has already marked them out as conspirators.
In A Song of Ice and Fire, Eddard Stark is right to be suspicious of Jaime Lannister and wary of the possibility of the guy becoming Warden of the East and the West. Jaime is a ruthless hotheaded man and the guy who crippled Eddard's son Bran in an attempt to kill him to prevent Bran from possibly revealing his and Cersei's incest. His main reason for not liking Jaime is that Jaime slouched on the Iron Throne after betraying Aerys. Eddard assumed that Jaime harbored ambitions for the Throne himself. Robert scoffs and jokes that Jaime was probably just tired and needed a place to sit. Robert was right.
In the Jack Reacher novel The Enemy, Major Reacher arrests a general and some subordinates for murder. His vague statements about evidence convince them that he knows about their massive conspiracy to murder numerous military officers, and fear they stumbled on their secret papers; in fact, he's arresting them for a Love Triangle gone horribly wrong and hasn't found the papers. Reacher was confused about why they surrendered so easily.
In J.R.R. Tolkien's The Unfinished Tales there is a sequence describing a meeting of the White Council, where Saruman becomes irritated over Gandalf's smoking, and Gandalf responds by praising the halfling's herb and blowing small smoke rings through a large one. It's almost comical how Saruman reads layers upon layers of hidden meanings into this gesture, coming to the conclusion that Gandalf's visits into the Shire and his smoking of pipeweed somehow relate to a secret plot involving the One Ring, and hobbits must somehow be involved with the matter. He proceeds to send spies across the Shire and starts to secretly smoke pipeweed himself to discover Gandalf's secret, to no avail. The kicker is that Gandalf had no idea that Bilbo's old ring was the One Ring at the time, and the smoke rings had absolutely no hidden meaning behind them.
In the novel The Day of the Jackal, the manhunt for hitman the Jackal starts with the police discovering his real identity, Englishman Charles Calthrop. It works, but in the epilogue the real Charles Calthrop turns up alive and well, completely unconnected.
In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Voldemort assumes that Harry is going to sacrifice himself because he doesn't want to see the others die around him. While that technically is true, there is another factor at play; Harry has to let Voldemort kill him, so the part of Voldemort's soul inside him would be destroyed.

Live Action TV

In an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, O'Brien's wife thinks some footage of him is fake because he does not drink coffee in the evenings, which he is doing in the video. The footage is fake, but when he gets back safely one of the first things he does is ask for a cup of coffee, since he does drink it in the evenings.
- When the crew goes back to the early 21st century, Dax has to get her com badge back from one of the residents of a glorified slum. He deduces she is a "good alien" from talking to her. Not because he had any medical knowledge or figured out she was a Fish Outof Water, but because he is utterly insane.
Law & Order's ADA Southerlyn was fired not because she was a lesbian, but for becoming convinced a defendant was innocent essentially due to white guilt, and spending most of the episode playing for the other team.
Gregory House came up with an effective treatment for a soap opera actor's quinine allergy while convinced that the patient had something else. Cuddy was called out by an inspector for giving him as much leeway as she did. Which included, um, kidnapping the patient.
On the Game Show 1 vs. 100, a contestant was give the question, "How many US states do not touch any other state? One, two, or three?" Thinking out loud, the contestant said that Hawaii is in the ocean, and one of the Great Lakes states is completely surrounded by lakes, so the answer must be two. The answer is two, but it's because the two states in question are Hawaii (which is indeed surrounded by ocean) and Alaska (which borders northwestern Canada).
Crops up often enough on Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?:
- One woman was asked "True or False: The female seahorse carries her baby in a pouch". Although seahorses are quite famous for the males doing this, her answer was no, because she'd never seen a pouch on a seahorse. (Which raises the question as to how many seahorses she's seen!)
- On a celebrity edition, Kellie Pickler was given a question regarding which of the Founding Fathers went on to be a president. Of the choices given, she reasoned it had to be Franklin Pierce because... all the letters in his last name were in HER last name! How that was supposed to be relevant, we'll never know.
On the Brit game show Perfection, which is all true/false questions, this tends to happen at least Once an Episode.
In The Twilight Zone episode, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," weird things start happening in a suburban neighborhood. All the residents start suspecting the problems have been caused by aliens and start pointing fingers at one another until one of the residents shoots another one. Then, it's revealed that aliens really were causing the strange things, but none of the residents were aliens themselves.
On CSI Crime Scene Investigation, a woman who'd made a living as a psychic was murdered after she'd been hired to contact another murder victim's spirit. The killer believed that she'd succeeded in this, and had learned that he'd hidden the body on his property in the Las Vegas neighborhood of Summerlin. In fact, she hadn't divined any such thing; rather, she'd said that the victim's spirit was in Summerland, a New Age-style counterpart to Heaven.

Newspaper Comics

This Dilbert comic.
In a Mafalda strip, when Mafalda's mother unplugs the TV while Gui was watching, he tries to keep watching the show by peeking through the power outlet. When Mafalda recounts the incident to Manolito, they both start laughing...until the latter says "The images come through the wire so small! How was he supposed to see anything?"

Other

In Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, he uses the sum 1/4 X 8/5 = 18/45 as an example of the result being right (18/45 can be simplified to 2/5, the correct answer), but the methodology being completely wrong.
- A similar idea is to simplify the fraction 16/64 by cancelling out the 6s to leave 1/4, which again just happens to be the correct answer.
  - 26/65 is yet another option.
An old joke: Three old men go to the doctor for a checkup (please don't ask why the doctor is giving all three men their checkup at the same time). Since they're getting on in years, the doctor decides to check their mental faculties as well. So he asks the first man, "What's three times three?" And the old man says, "273." So the doctor moves on to the second guy and asks the same question. "Tuesday," is the reply. Finally he asks the third old man. "9." "That's great!" says the doctor, "How'd you get to that answer?" "I subtracted 273 from Tuesday."

Video Games

In Rosenkreuzstilette, Spiritia finds out that the RKS's rebellion was indeed a waste of time and a potential downer for human-Magi relations, but not because (as she initially assumed) Count Sepperin had turned against the empire. Instead, his daughter had planned these machinations for her entertainment, along with her desire to usurp GOD!
In Disgaea 2, Rozalin comes to the conclusion that her "father", "Overlord Zenon" is a fake for completely arbitrary and selfish reasons. It's helped by the fact that he doesn't exactly deny it when she confronts him, but she completely misses all the real hints that her father really is a fake and that Overlord Zenon has reincarnated into none other than Rozalin herself.
Early in Ghost Trick, the protagonist and Ghost Amnesia sufferer Sissel learns his name as he infiltrates a foreign base where the people present call him by that name while viewing data on him. It turns out that not only was Sissel merely a pseudonym that the foreigners were given to refer to him, but the main character isn't even the man in the picture. Despite all of this, the protagonist's name really is Sissel.
Ace Attorney does this a lot, often realizing the culprit before fully understanding their motive or method. The most notable is Adrian Andrews—she actually did stab Juan Corrida and frame Matt for the murder, but she did it after Juan was already dead.
- In the same case, Wendy Oldbag decides that Matt Engarde is a terrible person because he supposedly ordered Adrian to get close to Juan in order to cause a scandal. The premise? Completely incorrect. The conclusion? Completely accurate.
In Mass Effect 3, during the first part of the game, one of the ongoing conversations that a player can eavesdrop on is an Elkoss-clan volus by the name of Rupe talking with a human woman named Sarah about "Sanctuary", the much-advertised "safe haven" from the war. Rupe Elkoss gives several reasons as to why Sanctuary is obviously a fraud, all based on his presumption it's some amoral, unscrupulous businessman seeking to make money off of people's fear. Sanctuary is a scam alright... but it's not a racket. It's a front for a Cerberus operation; the refugees are either indoctrinated into Cerberus soldiers, turned into husks as part of experiments with Reaper technology, or simply slaughtered outright. Oh, and there is "some amoral, unscrupulous businessman" running it, who just happens to be Miranda Lawson's father.

Web Comics

Quentyn Quinn from Tales of the Questor believes that a bunch of human coins are forged because the heads face the wrong way. Unbeknownst to him, the direction the heads face is irrelevant, but the coins are indeed fakes.
The premise of Request Comics #23.
Touched upon in this episode of Dinosaur Comics.
Also seen in this xkcd.
In Homestuck Betty "Batterwitch" Crocker is an evil alien empress, plotting dominion over the entire world, and was also the cruel stepmother of John's Nanna and Jade's Grandpa. John knows none of this, but has a deep dislike of her because he doesn't like cake very much.
In Kevin & Kell, when Corrie is disguised as a wolf by using Ralph's skin, Fiona notices something suspicious about her. Corrie thinks it's that Fiona has discovered her identity, but Fiona says that Corrie is Ralph's daughter. Corrie dismisses this theory, reasoning that Fiona only came to that conclusion due to Ralph's scent on the skin, until Bruno later finds out her origins, and discovers that this is the truth.
Played with in 8-Bit Theater, while the group is searching for an invisible flying castle, Fighter points to a castle in the sky thinking maybe it's the one they're looking for.
Black Mage: Does that LOOK like an invisible sky castle?
Fighter: Sure, maybe. I've never seen one.
Black Mage: Can you imagine why?
Fighter: ...
Fighter: ...
Fighter: ...
Fighter: ...Because they're quite rare?
Black Mage: I...
Black Mage: You...
Thief: Technically he's not wrong you know.
Black Mage: But he SHOULD be.

Web Original

Used in Red vs. Blue Reconstruction, when the reds are fighting Washington and Church.
Sarge: Alright, men. Stand down.
Grif: Stand down? We outnumber them three to two. That's like a three with a two. That's... 32% advantage... if you carry the one.
Simmons: I don't want to know how you came up with that, but you're actually right!
In Bravemule (a Dwarf Fortress story that's out there even by DF standards), Kou the warrior is told to raise crops. This is the rationale she presents for watering the field:
Kou's narration: "Drowning fire that murders the crop murders the fire, therefrom I surmise drowning the seeds would unmurder the crop."
In Dragon Ball Abridged, Bulma starts hitting on Trunks. Who, unbeknownst to her but well known to the audience, is her future son.
Bulma: So hey, like just gonna throw this out there. You're really cute.
Trunks: Well, you know, my mom always said I was a cute kid.
Bulma: Oh a momma's boy huh? I'll be your mommy. *winks*
Trunks: [Strained smile] (thinking) AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

Western Animation

In an episode of King of the Hill, Peggy gets a lawn gnome which Hank despises, so when Bobby accidentally damages while playing Hank uses this as pretext to get rid of it. Feeling guilty at Peggy's panicked reaction, Hank confesses but claims he did the whole thing. Peggy correctly guesses that he's lying to protect Bobby, but wrongly believes that Bobby is wholly to blame and thus punishes him very harshly. Later on, Hank goes out and buys a new gnome, then gives it to Bobby to try and smooth things out. Again, Peggy figures most of this out, but assumes that Hank did it out of pity rather than guilt, ultimately deciding that Bobby's been in the doghouse long enough.
This trope is named explicitly in the South Park episode "Best Friends Forever". At the end of the episode, Stan delivers An Aesop about how his group - which wanted Kenny kept on life support - was wrong for the right reasons. Cartman's group, which wanted Kenny taken off life-support (though only Cartman had the selfish reason of wanting Kenny's PSP) was Right for the Wrong Reasons.
- Also shows up in "The Snuke". When Cartman's racist suspicion that the new Muslim family in town are terrorists sets off an investigation that ultimately uncovers and foils a real terrorist plot being carried out by Russian mercenaries to help the British take back the United States, he concludes that his bigotry actually saved the day and thus he was doing the right thing. Kyle argues that he isn't right, "not in the way you're saying".
In Adventure Time Flame Princess eventually realises that the reason Finn has been putting out her fires is because fire is harmful to him... and reasons that it's because he's a water elemental.
In Winx Club, Tecna grows suspicious of their new teacher Avalon over his lack of wings. Her investigation soon points him to be the evil Angel of Darkness, but most of the evidence was coincidental or false. So it seems Avalon is actually good, except that he was actually Lord Darkar's spy in Alfea, so Tecna was right that Avalon was evil.
A variant in Ultimate Spider-Man, in which Spidey is right for the wrong reasons when he's not trying to be right. In "For Your Eye Only", Spidey taunts the Zodiac goons by giving them nicknames based on their animal-head masks. The ones in the lion masks he calls "Leo", and he never realises that that is actually their codename.
In the episode of SpongeBob where he loses his name tag, SpongeBob and Patrick are trying to retrace SpongeBob's steps that led up to him losing his nametag. Spongebob says he put an apple on Mr. Krabbs' desk, then two guys threw him in the dumpster. Patrick says the nametag must be in the apple and that they should go to Mr. Krabbs' desk to find it. Spongebob says Mr. Krabbs would have thrown the apple away by now and suggests checking the dumpster for the nametag. When they get there, they discover Spongebob is wearing his shirt backward and that he's had his nametag on the whole time. They had been wrong about the nametag being in the apple, but they did find it in the dumpster (because that's where they were when they found it).
In Disney's Mulan, the leader of the soldiers sings, "Did they send me daughters, when I asked for sons?" He had no way of knowing Mulan was a girl at the time. His song was meant to be question the abilities of the men.

Real Life

This is why in formal logic, "fallacious arguments" are considered to be not synonymous with "false conclusions": see also Fallacy Fallacy.
During the plague epidemics of Europe from the 17th to the 18th century, plague doctors used a protective garment of thick waxed- or greased-fabric overcoat, gloves, leggings, boots and a head cover with a mask fitted with glass eyepieces and a beak filled with aromatic herbs to filter the air. People were convinced back then plague spread itself through contaminated air. As plague spread from rats to humans via fleas, the primitive gas mask of the beak was useless in this respect - but the all-enveloping thick clothing still kept fleas away from the body and the mask kept them away from the face, increasing slightly the chances for the plague doctor to escape unharmed.
- While it gave rudimentary protection to the doctors, the fact that this costume was rarely cleaned, along its voluptuous layers of cloth ensured that the doctors carried bodily fluids and other filth from wherever they had visited on their robes, making them inadvertently spread the plague wherever they went. The widespread superstition at the time that the visit of a doctor was a sign of impending death wasn't far off the mark.
- And another thing - while they correctly deduced that some diseases travel through the air, they had no knowledge of microbes at the time, and assumed that diseases were caused by bad smells. That was the reason for the herbs in the beak.
- Similarly, Victorians believed malaria was caused by bad (mal) air. Missionaries in Africa wrote home about the primitive superstitions of the natives, who foolishly believed malaria was caused by evil swamp spirits. Both groups were wrong, but closing your windows at night and staying out of the swamp is a very effective way to avoid mosquitoes, which are the real vector of the disease.
  - In a way, the mosquitoes can be seen as evil swamp spirits. Especially if there are many of them attacking you.
  - More than one ancient city mitigated their malaria problems by filling in their local wetlands. Not because they knew what caused malaria, but the seasonal nature of it and the fact that a high number of mosquitoes tended to presage outbreaks of it was not have been lost on them.
Conservapedia founder Andrew Schlafly has started the "Conservative Bible Project", an attempt to remove what he perceives as "liberal bias" from the Bible. (It is exactly as blasphemous as it sounds.) One of the stories he has removed from his version is the adulteress story, on the grounds that it could be used as a justification to sleep around. Amusingly enough, he's actually right this time. This passage is currently believed by scholars not to have been in the original documents (albeit not for the same reasons Schlafly thinks).
Mongols believed that boiling water would appease the water spirits and keep them from cursing them with sickness. An amusing thought occurs that driving off germs wouldn't sound any more odd to people used to thinking about spirits but who never thought of germs. Sort of like Playing With Arbitrary Skepticism.
For hundreds if not thousands of years, popular wisdom dictated the man who happens to be in the path of a brown bear should lie down motionless and play dead, supposedly for bears avoid to eat corpses. Which is wrong, bears can and will eat carrion if hungry enough (and may actually prefer decaying meat) and can easily tell the difference between living and dead. Actually the bear tries to examine the human and decide if he or she is dangerous and should be killed or not - the one who lies down, does not move and does not fight back is usually left alone.
The common explanation for not quoting the horsepower of Top Fuel and Funny Cars dragster engines is "they are too powerful for a dynamometer". In practice, there are marine dynamometers able to measure tens of thousands of hp. But a Top Fuel engine lacks a cooling system and other features can't run at maximum horsepower for more than 10 seconds, so it can't perform a full multi-minute dyno run, whatever dynamometer is used. So, it's much more accurate to say they are "too powerful to last long enough for a dynamometer", which doesn't imply that the power ratings are off the scale.
The Titius-Bode Law was based on the distances of the known planets from the sun, though there was a gap between Mars and Jupiter. The discovery at Uranus at about the right distance was considered proof that the law was correct, and astronomers assumed there had to be something between Mars and Jupiter; so certain were they that the hypothetical planet was even given the name Phaeton and the astronomical community began searching in earnest. In 1801, Ceres was discovered. In the next few decades, plenty more was found at that distance, and the whole thing was dubbed the Asteroid Belt. As for the Titius-Bode Law, it was thrown into doubt by the 1846 discovery of Neptune (which is nowhere near where it "should" be, confounded by the discovery of Pluto (which is where the law states Neptune should be), and pretty much discredited by the Kuiper Belt.
- As for Pluto, it was discovered while searching for Planet X, which was considered to be causing disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. It was later determined that Neptune and Uranus's orbits weren't being disturbed at all—but the existence of Pluto was an established fact all the same.
Joseph McCarthy and his career reads almost like a deconstruction of the trope. He came to historical infamy by violently lashing out at "Communist Infiltration." He claimed to posses a list of "proven" infiltrators, and championed a drive to crush them. Most if not all his "evidence" was based on Blatant Lies and motivated by cynical political posturing (and maybe a sliver of good intentions). As it turned out, the Soviet Union did indeed control a vast network of spies throughout the West that did include local Communist Parties that were internally totalitarian and downright treasonous, and they combined did vast amounts of damage. The resulting witch hunts basically broke the prestige and cohesion of those networks and probably gained the US the upper hand for the first decade or so of the Cold War. The kicker is that in doing so, they also inflamed hysteria and harmed many, many innocent people while McCarthy himself did not catch a single Communist agent and continued a series of hysterical accusations until he committed electoral suicide by taking on the US military in the shadow of the Second World War, the Korean War, the Elbe River Crisis, *and* the Berlin Airlift. Both Harry S Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made similar, sarcastic jibes that McCarthy's hysterical methods made him "the best agent the Kremlin ever had" because of the way he made his cause look irrational.
Economist Adam Smith noted that sometimes merchants may end up benefiting the public good without ever actually intending to, simply by making the most efficient market decisions, therefore benefiting society in the long run. Smith did believe that often merchants would be fully aware of how their decisions benefit society, but his point was that even when they were unaware, and doing it only for the immediate money, it still ultimately benefited society to see market forces running efficiently.