Paradox of Hoaxes: How Errors Persist, Even When Corrected

By Samuel Arbesman

It was an accidental hoax. A screenshot from Back to the Future got passed around this summer, showing that June 27, 2012 was the date when the DeLorean hurtled forward in time. After a certain period of excitement, posts, and retweets, people soon realized that the image had been modified: the “actual” date wasn’t for three more years. Turns out this wasn’t even the first time this had happened. A similarly fudged screenshot of the DeLorean’s time counters spread across the internet just two years before (though that was an intentional hoax).

Not only were people spreading incorrect information, but the collective internet consciousness didn’t even recognize the return of the same error. And even when we do recognize such errors, we can’t fix them as easily as we might like. Just ask Philip Roth about how difficult it was to correct an entry on his own Wikipedia page – he had to publish an open letter in the New Yorker to satisfy the requirement for a more reputable secondary source.

Knowledge changes around us all the time. Yet we don’t always have the most up-to-date facts. This is true, I’d argue, even in an age of instant and massive information. Despite our unprecedented ability to rapidly learn new things and crowdfix mistakes, Knowledge and its sinister twin Error continue to propagate in complex and intriguing ways. Errors persist among us for far longer than they should and even when there is more accurate knowledge elsewhere. Newer knowledge does not spread as fast as it should and weaves its way unevenly throughout society.

The problem isn’t just epistemological – it can have serious consequences. Doctors might not realize there is a newer and better treatment. Teachers might not have the most current materials. Parents might not have the latest child-rearing techniques. Entire fields of science invest time, money, and other resources recapitulating the findings of others due to their ignorance of other fields’ advances.

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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/09/opinion-errors-knowledge-crowdfixing/