Comment Re:A cautionary tale? (Score 1) 189
This is a cautionary tale about the fundamental unreliability of human knowledge.
Precisely. If you think no "respected published author " ever did this exact same thing (got drunk and added a fabricated "fact" to one of their books), you are kidding yourself. This incident just shows how an incorrect fact can be made correct by mass citation.
An acquaintance of mine (a "first nation" tribal member) several decades ago got one of the elders drunk, and convinced him of a story he made up on the spot about a supposed ancient tribal sacred place. By the time the guy sobered up the next day, he was convinced this story was true. It got all kinds of coverage, there's now a monument there, and of course it now has a Wikipedia page and everything. In this case Wikipedia did absolutely nothing wrong, other than believing their multiple sources.
Surely this kind of thing happens all the time.