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How to turn a raccoon into an aardvark

Accepted submission by mcgrew at 2014-05-22 15:08:36
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I was amused by a story [newyorker.com] in The New Yorker about the power of wikipedia and the laziness of newspaper reporters. In a nutshell, a kid visited Brazil 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 "Brazillian aardvark" not by biologists, but by everyone else. I found it amusing. Remember, kids, wikipedia is not a valid citation!

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