A science podcast I listen to recently commented on a report that a physicist at Queensland University of Technology had noted that the OED definition of a siphon is incorrect. article at QUT magazine The definition attributes the siphon action to atmospheric pressure when in fact it is due primarily to gravity. The article notes that a check of other dictionaries finds the same error, although the definition is correct in the Oxford Dictionary of English. Encyclopedias and scientific reference books typically have correct descriptions of the action of a siphon.
Does the fact that so many dictionaries repeat this error tell us anything about how later dictionaries were compiled? Is the OED the source of the bad definition which has been propagated by possibly lazy lexicographers?
It is a form of plagiarism by people to lazy to do the research. Unfortunately that is how the world wide what's it is made up.
This is how it works.
Person #1 writes something that has not been researched or is just a plain outright lie. Usually it is something heard from another unverified source
Person #2 needs to write something on the same subject. Person #2 researches only as far as Person #1 data, ASSUMES it is OK and copies it.
Person #3 needs to write something on the same subject. Person #3 researches and finds two sites with supporting data, so ASSUMES it must be right.
It just gets worse. Had Person #1 checked facts, a lot of misinformation could be avoided.
The problem is, everyone assumes and no-one verifies.
It was ever thus. Doesn't every speck of historical documentation we have on Atlantis ultimately derive from a single source?
Okay, so that single source was Plato, but still....
From a single source? Not necessarily Ron.
More than one person can witness and record an historical event. The difference in the source is the view point, interpretation or bias of the writer and is true for all documentation, including historical and religious. We read what they want us to believe or what the writer believes, in their own mind to be true.
Let's take a for instance – Cinderella's glass slipper was, according to many sources a misinterpretation of the French for fur (vair) with the French for glass (verre). An easy mistake if the story was related orally and over a glass or two of wine. A mistake that is amplified by such internet writings as this where the writer openly admits they heard it over dinner and pass the story on without verification.
Another website (snopes.com/language/misxlate/slippers.asp)says the mistranslation story is incorrect and offers some explanation, now here is the bummer. Is the explanation, verification? For some yes, and so the second theory becomes gospel.
I'm now trying to remember where I heard this (one of Carl Sagan's books is the front-runner theory at the moment), but I was given to understand that every other account of the existence of Atlantis took Plato as its source; that there was no truly independent confirmation that such a place had ever existed.