History & CultureHow it works

How to spot that ten sources are really one.

In circular reporting an unsourced claim moves from a Wikipedia article into a news story and returns as a footnote in the same article. That is how a student's 2008 invention gave the coati the name "Brazilian aardvark", which several major papers repeated. Click every footnote until you reach a primary source – or a circle.

Useful: Do not count how many sources say something; count how many checked it independently.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

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