A recent study found that there is no measurable difference between maintaining a 3 or 6 foot distance for the purpose of safe social distancing. The conclusion the researchers came to is nothing new, as it serves to reinforce a paper that came out last summer in Lancet that said 3 feet is fine to achieve social distance. But this new study is still worth a moment of discussion, as it is representative of a fundamental problem within the scientific community: presenting commonly agreed upon “facts” as science.

The basis for the “science” of 6 feet of distance is rooted in work done with tuberculosis in the late 19th century, not on current scientific inquiry. Presenting it as a “fact” that applies to a current situation has been greatly misleading.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com.