Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Feb 10, 2010, 09:50 AM

I'm intrigued that celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy was accused of "using Wikipedia" for his shoddy research and defended himself by saying "My source of information is books, not Wikipedia."   The book he read is a famous hoax, an account of the thoughts of famous Paraguayan named Jean-Baptiste Botul whose thought, of course, is "Botulism." Levy fell for the hoax, perpetrated byjournalist Frdric Pags:  Weve had a big laugh, obviously, Mr. Pags said of Mr. Lvy. This one was an error that was really simple that the media immediately understood.

Submitted by Cathy Davidson on Dec 19, 2008, 10:37 AM
The good folks at George Mason University (one of the most technologically sophisticated universities around--they brought us Zotero) have perpetrated a very clever hoax, creating a pirate, Edward Owens, an archive, an interpretation, and a Wikipedia entry. You can now find the corrected, exposed Wikipedia entry on Wikipedia with links to the sources that exposed this as a hoax. It's all smart, fun, and interesting. Especially to one who began her career writing on Ambrose Bierce and whose early mentor was historian Russell B. Nye.