If you do not wear a hat, but are otherwise bundled up when in cold weather, half the heat you lose is from your head.
The trick is not to let non-experts summarize technical papers for you I think, lest they leave out the critical context.
This myth is like the precursor to buzzfeed.
Yeah and I don't think OP's labelling this as a "myth" is really clarifying anything. It's not "true" or "false": it's an overly vague and broad generalization from one study. It's like if someone told you "You eat half of your fat at breakfast". Is that true or false? Well, it depends a lot on which "you" you're talking about and which day you're talking about, but in any case it doesn't make much sense to generalize it into some sort of bizarre universal truth or falsehood.
This is what I always thought the "more heat from your head" thing was about!
To be fair this article isn't accurate either.
If you click the British Medical Journal link, it states that you'll lose about 50% through the head when clothed in -4C weather. This article would only be accurate if you qualify it by saying "nude in -4C weather, you'll only lose 7-10% of body heat through the head"
The article also mentions another experiment done about 20 years ago with swimmers and the same body heat measurements, with results showing that heat loss was correlated with area exposed. It's a poppish article but the background behind the myth was the big TIL for me
I think in that study they had a bunch of dudes all dressed up in winter gear but no hats. Then they got all shocked when they saw heat dumping out of their heads. Then they put hats on all of them, and shocker, less heat loss.
That's absolutely incredible! What a wonder science is!
I always heard this in scouting. Might be incorrect but it still does a great job getting the point across. You’ll be a lot warmer with a beanie vs no beanie.
Whoa 😳 genuine TIL for me!!
But Hal Johnson and Joanne Mcloed assured me this was true
The military and holding on to factoids and habits that have little scientifical or practical basis? I'm shocked! /s