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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)?
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Friday May 23 2014, @10:45PM
And now the New Yorker article serves as a citation to counter all the others, and support removal of that fake factoid from WP.
IMHO, a search for "brazillan aardvark" should be a good start in determining which authors/writers/editors should be summarily fired. Really no excuse for that.
This was a minor error in a non-important factoid, but there are articles on WP controlled with an iron-fist by corporate interests, who heavily slant and distort entire articles to their own benefit.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.