For about a decade, the most repeated fact in popular science was that trees talk to each other. The story was irresistible. Underground fungal networks connect the roots of different trees. Through these networks, nutrients move. Older trees appear to send carbon to younger ones. Someone called it the wood wide web, and the phrase did more work than any paper. It reached children's books, documentaries and at least four bestsellers. Forests became communities. Trees became mothers. Then a group of ecologists went back and read the original studies carefully. The networks are real. That part has never been in question. Fungi genuinely connect roots, and material genuinely moves. What is far less certain is nearly everything that was built on top of that. The evidence that mature trees preferentially support their own seedlings turns out to rest on a small number of studies, some with a handful of trees, several never replicated. The direction of transfer is often unclear. In some cases the fungus appears to be the one benefiting, moving carbon for its own purposes, which is a considerably less charming story. The reviewers were careful to say that the idea might still be right. They said only that it is not yet established, and that it has been reported as established for years. This is the awkward part. The correction will not travel. The original claim was warm, memorable and morally satisfying; the correction is technical, provisional and disappointing. One of these spreads and the other does not. There is a lesson here that has nothing to do with trees. A finding that flatters our intuitions gets tested less, not more, because doubt feels like meanness towards an idea everyone has already decided to love. The forest, meanwhile, continues doing whatever it is actually doing, under no obligation to be a metaphor.