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How to Turn a Raccoon into an Aardvark

posted by martyb on Friday May 23 2014, @12:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the circular-reasoning dept.

mcgrew writes:

I was amused by a recent story in The New Yorker about the power of Wikipedia and the laziness of newspaper reporters. In a nutshell, a kid visited Brazil in 2008 and saw a species of raccoon that resembled an aardvark. Looking it up on Wikipedia he edited the page about that species of raccoon and added "also known as the Brazilian aardvark." Several British newspapers published something about the "aardvark", which someone else used as a citation on the bogus entry.

So now that species of raccoon is known world-wide as a "Brazilian aardvark" not by biologists, but by everyone else. I found it amusing. Remember, kids, Wikipedia is not a valid citation!

See also: circular reporting, malamanteau, and wikiality. What other examples of this have you encountered? Have you authored any? Which one(s)?

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Horse With Stripes on Friday May 23 2014, @02:00PM

    by Horse With Stripes (577) on Friday May 23 2014, @02:00PM (#46744)

    I'm not sure that "Wikipedia" and "authoritative" belong in the same sentence, unless it's something along the lines of "Wikipedia cannot be used as an authoritative source".

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday May 23 2014, @06:07PM

    by sjames (2882) on Friday May 23 2014, @06:07PM (#46834) Journal

    Normally not, but since the Wikipedia article is the actual cause of the new common name, cited as authoritative by other respected publications, that makes it the source (and cause).