All of which should put a bullet through the urban legend that small cap stocks outperform large cap stocks in the long run.

FORBES: Doffing the cap

It's a little like the urban legend about a garment vendor who sent a designer coat overseas to be copied, only to get back 10, 000 coats with an identical stain on the sleeve.

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"The urban legend (that Facebook is losing younger users) flows more often than not from surveys people have done of younger users that indicate that they're using other social services ... much of the concern stems from the assumption that this is a zero-sum game, and that's not how we see it, " Ebersman said.

CNN: Survey: Teens' enthusiasm for Facebook is waning

The only urban legend here appears to be the conclusions of the study itself, which was widely touted in the print and electronic media as proving the superiority of the U.S. FDA to its European counterpart in approving cancer drugs.

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Knossos's enduring fascination derives as much from Evans's bold restoration of the palace, the centre of Europe's first urban civilisation, as from the raunchy legend of the Minotaur, the monstrous offspring of Queen Pasiphae's affair with a bull, who was shut up at Knossos in a labyrinth built by Daedalus, an early technological whizz.

ECONOMIST: Bullshot

Theories on just how the American crayfish found its way to the Middle East have reached urban legend status.

CNN: Egypt's crayfish invasion

There's hype, there's bluster, there's exaggeration and the unmistakable flicker of a new urban legend.

WSJ: Jason Gay: What Linsanity Says About New York

Lastly, there are Chinese whispers , which make the Internet such a perfect vehicle for urban legend.

ECONOMIST: Gossip on the web

Unlike many of the worry-wart fears that mom expressed during my childhood, these are not simply a product of urban legend.

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