The perception of taste is remarkably complex, not only on the tongue but in organs throughout the body.
The idea that specific tastes are confined to certain areas of the tongue is a myth that “persists in the collective consciousness despite decades of research debunking it.” Also wrong: the notion that taste is limited to the mouth.
It’s not the only “what passes for science curriculum in schools in the United States” factoid that is inaccurate.
The thing about genetics and blue / brown eye color was obviously false to me even as a child. I can look around and see that there are green eyes and that there’s some disagreement about what is “hazel” versus “brown” or light brown or whatever. To me it was obviously wrong that it was as simple as a single gene that was dominant / recessive in exactly the way it was described – like if there are two people with brown eyes, there is a 0% chance that they have anything recessive going on other than that single blue gene – and it pissed me off that they were teaching us something in school that was wrong, just because it was sort of approximately true, and if we pretend it’s always true, it lets us make the point we were trying to make.
There are surely other examples you can draw from; I am sure there are plenty that really do work the way they were telling us eye color did. You don’t need to teach the kids to believe the textbook when it doesn’t line up with what they can directly observe, and not to ask questions but just say it was how it was described in the book, and ignore counterexamples they can see and interact with on a daily basis.
If you can’t tell, I’m still to this day a little pissed off about it. 🙂