Heard a guy on a podcast say 73% of people get the 5 second rule wrong, so I looked it up

Nathan Kim · 2026-10-11T20:45:04.346118+00:00

Last Tuesday I was listening to a food science podcast on my drive to work and the host dropped a stat that 73% of people think the 5 second rule is about time, not moisture. I paused it at a red light because that number sounded way too specific to be made up. Turns out the real study from Rutgers in 2016 tested four surfaces and found bacteria transfer depends way more on wet vs dry food than on seconds. The 73% number the host used was from a random Twitter poll of like 400 people, not the actual research. I also saw a clip of that same stat going around on TikTok with 2 million likes last week, which is probably where the podcast guy got it. Does anyone know a good site that tracks where these stats originally come from? I want to check stuff like this faster instead of pausing my drive every time.

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Heard a guy on a podcast say 73% of people get the 5 second rule wrong, so I looked it up | Deconstructed Viral Claims - Vivisector