Difference between revisions of "Talk:978: Citogenesis"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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I'm curious if the doubled "was" in the first panel was an intentional "easter egg" of the kind of carelessness that may be typical of somebody vandalizing Wikipedia with fake information, or if it was unintentional on Randall's part. Perhaps we'll never know. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.123|172.69.63.123]] 19:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
 
I'm curious if the doubled "was" in the first panel was an intentional "easter egg" of the kind of carelessness that may be typical of somebody vandalizing Wikipedia with fake information, or if it was unintentional on Randall's part. Perhaps we'll never know. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.123|172.69.63.123]] 19:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
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An example I once encountered of a much sloppier attempt at citogenesis: the article for a small, unincorporated community, near where I grew up claimed that [place] "is home to the art of cheddar winking." It cited a book that did not exist, whose ISBN number was for the Book of Mormon. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.48.150|172.69.48.150]] 13:40, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Revision as of 13:40, 26 February 2021

Bonus points if the editor citing the work is also the person who created the fake source!Davidy22[talk] 06:59, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

The title text is not addressed in the explanation. I've read some popular science books, but they do not seem to suffer the problem cited there. Maybe there's a particular brand of pop science that is very susceptible to that sort of problem? --Quicksilver (talk) 17:48, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

We probably never will know, but as the comic itself says: Google is your friend! I found a nice story at the xkcd forum belonging to the German minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. I have added this to the trivia section.--Dgbrt (talk) 12:00, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

On a more amusing note, it is impossible to actually verify half of the obscure references on Wikipedia, as they are often magazines or books unlikely to be kept by typical libraries. One could easily fake an obscure reference if you know of a book with a title that seemingly pertains to the subject matter, but you know that the book had a printing run of less then 10,000 copies. 108.162.215.63 18:09, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Note however, that this would only work if the information is so obscure that there are no conflicting sources. Benjaminikuta (talk) 21:26, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

On a less amusing note it costs 30 dollars/pounds/euros to get a copy of a scientific article that may or may not be useful for journalists that may or may not have free access to said data. Or you could get a pirated copy of it from a suicidal source and have the FBI come after you instead. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 13:24, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

This article doesn't actually explain the self-sustaining cycle that is the point of the article. It references citogenesis and where the word was derived, and references wikipedia. None of that explains the "fake article" -> "news writer references article" -> "wiki editor adds citation of news writer" -> "fake article referenced in other news". Cflare (talk) 18:56, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Actually in the comic, citogenesis looks very similar to cyclogenesis. I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait (talk) 13:24, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

What happened to the "portmanteau" in paragraph 2? SilverMagpie (talk) 22:41, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Never mind, I fixed it. SilverMagpie (talk) 22:42, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm curious if the doubled "was" in the first panel was an intentional "easter egg" of the kind of carelessness that may be typical of somebody vandalizing Wikipedia with fake information, or if it was unintentional on Randall's part. Perhaps we'll never know. 172.69.63.123 19:47, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

An example I once encountered of a much sloppier attempt at citogenesis: the article for a small, unincorporated community, near where I grew up claimed that [place] "is home to the art of cheddar winking." It cited a book that did not exist, whose ISBN number was for the Book of Mormon. 172.69.48.150 13:40, 26 February 2021 (UTC)