false attribution
{{Short description|Credit for a work given to the wrong person}}
False attribution may refer to:
- Misattribution in general, when a quotation or work is accidentally, traditionally, or based on bad information attributed to the wrong person or group.
- A specific fallacy where an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased, or fabricated source in support of an argument.[https://www.scribd.com/doc/8009498/HUMBUG-eBook-by-Jef-Clark-and-Theo-Clark Humbug! The skeptic’s field guide to spotting fallacies in thinking], a textbook on fallacies. "False Attribution": p. 56.
Incorrect identification of source
One particular case of misattribution is the Matthew effect. A quotation is often attributed to someone more famous than the real author. This leads the quotation to be more famous, but the real author to be forgotten (see also: obliteration by incorporation and Churchillian Drift).{{cite journal|doi=10.1063/1.1768652|title=Could Feynman Have Said This?|year=2004|author=Mermin, N. David|journal=Physics Today|volume=57|issue=5|pages=10–11|bibcode=2004PhT....57e..10M|doi-access=free}}
Such misattributions may originate as a sort of fallacious argument, if use of the quotation is meant to be persuasive, and attachment to a more famous person (whether intentionally or through misremembering) would lend it more authority.
In Jewish biblical studies, an entire group of falsely-attributed books is known as the pseudepigrapha.
Fallacy
A fraudulent advocate may go so far as to fabricate a source in order to support a claim. For example, the "Levitt Institute" was a fake organisation created in 2009 solely for the purposes of (successfully) fooling the Australian media into reporting that Sydney was Australia’s most naive city.{{cite web | title = Deception Detection Deficiency | website = Media Watch | date = 2009-09-27 | url = https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/deception-detection-deficiency/9974778 | access-date = 2023-12-06 | archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20211216072721/https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/deception-detection-deficiency/9974778 | archivedate = 2021-12-16 | url-status = live}}
Contextomy (quoting out of context) is a type of false attribution.{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2005.tb02675.x|title = Quoted Out of Context: Contextomy and Its Consequences|journal = Journal of Communication|volume = 55|issue = 2|pages = 330–346|year = 2005|last1 = McGlone|first1 = Matthew S.}}
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
Further reading
- {{cite book |title=Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations |author=Garson O'Toole |year=2017 |publisher=Little A |isbn=978-1503933408 }}