Entrepreneurship has accumulated a large stock of taken-for-granted truths: mythical creatures such as unicorns and gazelles, fashionable proverbs such as ¿fail fast` and ¿fake it till you make it`, and grand narratives of heroic founders, entrepreneurial states, and salvation through venturing. This editorial introduces a special issue that subjects these myths, fads, and fairy tales to systematic scrutiny. We first trace their social, cultural, and ideological roots, showing how they draw on deep restoration narratives, cultural place-myths, and institutional incentives that keep them alive. Then, we set out the social and scientific costs of leaving them unexamined. Testing such claims, we argue, is a public responsibility of entrepreneurship research rather than an act of cynicism. Introducing nine contributions that pair critique with reconstruction across three themes - the icons we celebrate, the promises of salvation we attach to entrepreneurship, and the assumptions we make about entrepreneurs themselves - we distil a practice of `evidential hygiene¿: debunking that draws on plural methods, attends to distributions, time, and systems, and replaces each myth with something more accurate and more useful.
