Well, to be fair, the books in question aren't exactly high-brow material. But I've even seen University Press books get tripped up by Wikipedia. See the "Coat

Well, to be fair, the books in question aren't exactly high-brow material. But I've even seen University Press books get tripped up by Wikipedia. See the "Coati" example on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_incidents#Known_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_citogenesis_... The thing is, this would have been avoidable. If Wikipedia tells you someone called J. Bloggs invented some kind of gadget 100 years ago, you can do a Google Books search to see if there are any 20th-century sources saying so. If there aren't, then Wikipedia is having you on. Alan MacMasters is not the only example: exactly the same thing happened with the inventor of the hair-straightener. See Example 16 here: https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday_fails/ https://www.theregister.com/2017/01/16/wikipedia_16_birthday...