Hi Chris. I’m sure you have heard the old urban myth about bumblebees not being able to fly.

"Like the bumblebee, they said it could never fly."

This statement appeared a few years ago in Popular Science, starting off an article about drag racing.

Indeed, the venerable line about scientists having proved that a bumblebee can't fly appears regularly in magazine and newspaper stories. It's also the kind of item that can come up in a cocktail party conversation when the subject turns to science or technology.

It's even the title of a book, Bumblebees Can't Fly by Barry Siskind, which offers self-help strategies for staying productive in busy, changing times. And Robert Cormier echoes the same idea in the title of his teen book The Bumblebee Flies Anyway.

Often, the statement is made in a distinctly disparaging tone aimed at putting down those know-it-all scientists and engineers who are so smart yet can't manage to understand something that's apparent to everyone else.

What it boils down to is that just because were not smart enough to see something another person does does not mean that the person is wrong, or that we are wrong. It means there is another way of thinking. The hurricane bit may not cause earthquakes to shut down each and every time one occurs, but should it be rejected out of hand? It seems to me that the biggest problem is that some scientists believe in themselves to much in that they have all the correct answers, or at least most of the correct answers. Lowell could very well be wrong, but he could also be right. I don’t accept everything you say, but neither do I reject it. I catalog it with all of the other information I have. One day it may fit, or answer a question I haven’t asked, or have been asking for many years. Take Care…Don in creepy town

• Bumblebees Can't Fly