[Richard T. Eger]

"Probable" or "possible" would have been appropriate until confirmed. Chasing down the origins of false information is exhausting and others may accept statements as fact when they are not, thus setting them in hardened concrete, making it virtually impossible to undo the harm.

An author decided to test whether information he was providing on the Internet was being used by others without his permission. So, while I think he did himself more harm than good, he intentional put some false information into what he was writing. Sure enough, he was able to track the misinformation to a variety of published sources. One respected author was furious when this fellow revealed what he had done, as the author thought he was accessing correct information. The upshot was that his book unwittingly contains errors. No author would want this to happen to him.