Don't even have to be about science, it can just be random little myths that spring up people try to correct. I happen to know stuff about firearms, got quite a few, from one of those places people can have quite a few. One day I'm scrollin down reading history on the M16 trying to remember something and I find the dumbest goddamn thing I ever heard, this claim the M16 got issued without cleaning kits and Colt claimed it was "entirely self-cleaning". I don't know if ya ever used firearms but that would never happen, and is the absolute dumbest claim I ever saw in my life. "reduced fouling" don't mean "entirely self-cleaning".
Now I don't really know how to use wikipedia but I thought it was one of those fake edits people might do as a joke. Went checking edit history and stuff to find out and turns out someone else tried to point out the myth too and some jackass with authority is jealously guarding that myth to keep it on the page forever.
Went and checked the government documents myself, among other things there is no Colt material making that claim in that context. Government also ordered cleaning kits, Colt supplied cleaning kits, so it's also contradicted by fact there too. Simple thing is there just weren't enough to go around, supply shortages, and someone at some point created the myth by misunderstanding that a design to "reduce fouling" thereby "reduce cleaning" don't in any way no hell no how imply "self-cleaning" in that way. Yet the claim remains on wikipedia, without clarification, because I guess some idiots repeating the myth in a book makes the myth okay.
I went and checked that book, too. No source of the myth in the cited book. It's completely fuckin made up and anyone with half a brain and a day using a firearm would know that, but there it is. All because someone, for some reason only God knows, personally wants it to be there and has the authority to keep it there.