In 1995, two men robbed two banks in Greater Pittsburgh, United States at gunpoint without wearing any mask to conceal their identities. They knew about CCTV and surveillance cameras. They also knew that lemon juice can be used as invisible ink.

So, instead of wearing masks, they splashed their faces with lemon juice, with the belief that the liquid would make their faces invisible to security cameras. Unfortunately, their false belief in their competency as camouflage experts led to them being identified, arrested, and jailed.

The robberies they committed directly inspired the research into how people with little knowledge or ability in a given field tend to overestimate their knowledge and ability in that field, making them arrive at the wrong conclusions.

In short, their lack of knowledge prevented them from knowing that they lacked the knowledge to make good judgments pertaining to that particular field. The cognitive bias is now called the Dunning-Kruger effect, named after Prof David Dunning and Justin S Kruger who carried out the research.

Rendang is one of the most popular dishes not just for Hari Raya but also for other celebrations in Southeast Asia. The spicy dish’s ability to appeal to people across ethnic lines in the region has even been acknowledged by the fast-food giant MacDonald’s with their offerings of rendang burgers in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

However, the dish also reminded me of the controversy when the orang putih judges of a cooking contest in the United Kingdom deemed the rendang made by a Malaysian contestant was not up to par because it was, quote, not crispy, unquote.

The comment unleashed a backlash not just from Malaysians but other countries in the region, as rendang is a dish of this region. Rendang was never meant to be crispy. How can it even be suggested that rendang be crispy, by foreigners to boot, as if they know the dish better than the Malaysian contestant.

The judges’ lack of rendang knowledge caused them to arrive at the conclusion that rendang should be crispy, and it also prevented them from seeing that it was a wrong conclusion.

Even without the likes of Dunning and Kruger to conduct such research here in Malaysia, we already have a word to describe those who overreach the limit of their knowledge. In Kedah and other northern states, such people are called palatao, short for ‘kepala tahu’ or know-it-all.

The bank robberies in 1995 that became the basis of the Dunning-Krueger research did not make the world news. By contrast, the crispy rendang incident in the United Kingdom was known and blew up in the news almost instantly, thanks largely to social media. The incorrect conclusions of the judges were quickly debunked.

On the other hand, social media also makes it easier for falsehoods generated by those who overestimate their knowledge to gain traction.

The Dutch East India Company or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) colonised what is now Indonesia and parts of what is now Malaysia in the 17th century. Despite the fact that the exploits of VOC were well-documented and taught in history lessons in Malaysian schools, some people are adamant that VOC stands for Victoria Original Company.

Type in Victoria Original Company on Facebook and you’ll see what I mean. The people promoting “the truth” offer no explanation at all how the VOC could have been named after Victoria when the British monarch was only born more than 200 years after the formation of the company.

The last Tudor ruler Queen Elizabeth was on the English throne when the VOC was formed and nobody had any inkling that the throne would be passed on to her German descendants (one of whom was Victoria), who would be in charge after her passing.

The story being passed as “the truth” was that Victoria was facing financial difficulties as the plague had hit Europe hard in the 1600s and had to seek help from a Malay sultan. The Malay sultan then was said to have asked for divine intervention for the gold in the Malay archipelago to shift (berkalih) to Europe.

The word “berkalih” was said to have been changed a bit to form the name of a prominent British bank. Yes, you guessed it, it was the name of a bank synonymous with the English Premier League.

Most people would just say bah humbug and forget the tall tale but unfortunately, the story has quite a bit of a following and hardcore believers. Some have even sought my opinion on whether it is true that the billions of dollars kept in the Victoria Original Company trust will soon be released and those who invest money to help secure the release will stand to reap huge dividends.

They were quite angry with me when I told them it was a scam, so they left and I never receive any update about the whole thing.

A university student once confided in me that his lecturer has been pressuring him to join the Kesultanan Nusantara money scheme, which shows that even the highly educated can make the mistake of making decisions in fields they know nothing about.

Another professor, who knows nothing about electronics or communication technology, vehemently argued that the phone call to the White House from the moon was proof that the moon landing was faked. “Everybody knows there are no landlines on the moon and yet the US President picked up the landline telephone in his office to answer the call said to be from the moon”.

Clearly, the professor did not know that the car phone, linked to landline telephones by radio waves to make and receive calls, entered the consumer market in 1946, more than 20 years before the moon landing. He didn’t even know that he didn’t know it, which led him to think he knows all about telephone technology to brand the moon landing a hoax.

I’m not a rocket scientist and I know nothing about the science behind the moon landing. I have no problem with people presenting evidence to prove or disprove the moon landing but the evidence and argument should, at the very least, be able to withstand logical, scientific scrutiny.

In the writing of theses and academic papers, the risk of overreaching one’s expertise is mitigated by the stipulation that the relevant references and citations must be provided for whatever ideas, arguments or hypotheses presented.

In Islam, the relevant Quranic verses and hadith must be cited when verifying whether an idea or action is in line with Islamic teachings or not.

The discipline to verify facts by academicians and Islamic scholars was sadly not followed when certain ustazs claimed that the University of Alaska High-altitude Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) was used to control the weather. Some even claimed that HAARP was behind the devastating earthquakes in central Turkey and neighbouring Syria on Feb 6 this year.

At first glance, it sounded plausible as the HAARP was under the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency when it was built in 1993. However, the high-frequency waves HAARP sends to the ionosphere (yes, up there in the sky) are only 3.6 Megawatts.

The Feb 6 earthquake was estimated to be equal to the energy of eight million tonnes of trinitrotoluene (TNT), a very powerful explosive. Eight million tonnes of TNT is equal to about 9.3 million Megawatt-hour. The 3.6 Megawatts HAARP would have to run continuously for 300 years to equal 9.3 million Megawatt-hour.

On the positive side, we may be close to making electric cars zipping along all day on a single AA battery and seeing some Malaysians getting the Nobel for science. A tall order? Not at all, provided those making the claim of HAARP causing the Turkey earthquake can show us how 3.6 Megawatts can be boosted to produce 9.3 million megawatt-hour in an instant.

All these instances of people churning out falsehoods due to their overconfidence in certain fields will likely increase with state elections looming. We have seen how fantastic promises and brilliant formulae abound during elections, only to be shot down later by the very people who bandied them about when they come to power.

My religious school teacher, the late Cikgu Mat, blessed be his soul, reminded us not to believe everything we were told without checking. He quoted a Javanese proverb to drive home his point:

Maleng nek nyolong karo linggis, (Thieves steal with crowbars)
Wong alim nek nyolong karo hadis. (The learned steal with words)

Cikgu Mat was not a professor like Dunning but his advice is still relevant today, if not even more so, although he gave it 43 years ago.