Have you seen the photo of the dog that's as big as a horse?  How about the deer on top of a telephone pole?  And do you know about the Hollywood actor who needed emergency medical help because of a gerbil that went where no gerbil had gone before?

That's all a bunch of bunk, or course. But we've heard those stories, or seen those photos, so many times that they have become a part of our world, even if they are totally false.

These days we are bombarded with information, much of it incorrect, and long after the political campaigns are over a lot of it will still be buried in the part of our brain where we store our memories. And new research shows that the more intensely we believe something to be true, the more likely it will resurface in the future, even if we have learned it was false.

Cognitive psychologist Andrew Butler of Duke University, a memory and learning specialist, hopes to figure out a way to help us purge our brains of false data, and he's a little encouraged. But it's probably not going to be easy.

Butler's latest research project, conducted with psychologist Lisa Fazio of Carnegie Mellon University and Elizabeth Marsh of Duke, found that it's possible to correct misinformation, but the correction may not last much more than a week.