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Here's the edit that introduced this to Wikipedia: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/288109348 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/288109348

by JdeBP 7y ago

Here's the edit that introduced this to Wikipedia: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/288109348 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Diff/288109348 You can see how it was falsely sourced by adding it in front of the source that does indeed confirm (it being a re-hash of Shelton's earlier book The Life of Isle Royale, published in 1975) that Siskwit Lake is oligotrophic, but says nothing in support of the added material.

ahelwer 7y ago
I was going to speculate that the wikipedia user was inspired by xkcd's "citogenesis" comic [0] but that was published in 2011 [1] while the edit happened in 2009. [0] https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/ [1] https://xkcd.com/978/info.0.json https://xkcd.com/978/info.0.json
- Sniffnoy 7y ago
  XKCD did not at all invent the idea of putting false information on Wikipedia.
  - kibwen 7y ago
    Note that citogenesis is a fair bit more insidious than simple false information.
    - Sniffnoy 7y ago
      Sure, but there's no particular reason to suspect that here; the original edit seems to have been simple vandalism.