When I was working on a project called LAWA and was due to present it at the Freshwater Sciences Society conference, we opened with a quote: ‘Everything as simple as it can be, but not simpler’. This is widely attributed to Einstein, but it turns out he didn’t actually say it. Einstein expressed the sentiment and it was paraphrased in a newspaper article by composer Roger Sessions. In the interests of visual clarity and reduced clutter, we did attribute it to Einstein in our talk. Thereby, a myth was perpetuated.