I've thought about this with respect to sources. I was reading a book which mentioned Emile Durkheim's work. I have never read any Durkheim. I cannot speak to D

I've thought about this with respect to sources. I was reading a book which mentioned Emile Durkheim's work. I have never read any Durkheim. I cannot speak to Durkheim's points nor whether the author accurately represented them. What's even worse is that if I did read Durkheim, he'd probably discuss someone before him. And I wouldn't know if he accurately represented that person's points. I'm not sure if the author who referenced Durkheim has read the people who Durkheim cites^[1], so I'm not sure if they know either. We have this game of telephone where we all cite these sources and people rarely, if ever check. And this is in academic literature where publishing happens pretty slowly! In Twitter it's easy to reach a source chain of 5-6 deep in days, let alone months. [1]: They probably have but I can't say.