> Not sure if it's a true story or not (can't be bothered to check) - but seems like a good illustrations of the problems that are faced. This exact sentiment

> Not sure if it's a true story or not (can't be bothered to check) - but seems like a good illustrations of the problems that are faced. This exact sentiment -- that the truth of some tidbit of anecdata is not only unverified, but it's verification is irrelevent and should be treated as backing up a larger position regardless -- is one of the core problems with the current discourse. As other commenters point out, not only is it not true, but such fraud is accounted for and mitigated in the existing procedure. So this is a bad illustration, it should seem like a bad illustration on the face of it because it hasn't been verified or contextualized, and in general we should all be suspicious of simple, pat little anecdotes that validate our assumptions about how the world is or ought to be. Sorry for the rant, but I'm going to downvote this lazy thinking every time I see it. I hope we all aspire to better analytical thinking about the world, given that most of us here have to write software that interfaces with it.