On the verdict “mostly myth” — and why we don’t just say “false”

Every Atlas entry carries one of six verdicts. Three of them allow a stereotype to be partly true, and we use those a lot — 'Mostly Myth' and 'Mixed' and 'Supported with Context.' We don’t reach for 'Debunked' just because we disagree with a stereotype. We reach for it when the data directly contradicts the claim. The distinction matters because reality is granular: women do, in fact, take longer at parallel parking. Women do, in fact, run colder than the office thermostat assumes. Women do, in fact, apologize more often. The right argument isn’t to deny those measurements; it’s to reckon with what they actually mean and what they’re used to justify. ‘Women take 20 seconds longer to park’ is a small fact that funds a much larger discrediting move — and that move is what we want readers to see. ‘Mostly myth’ names the shape of that move precisely. We’d rather be honest at high resolution than triumphant at low resolution.