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LAS VEGAS (KSNV) — The internet is so widely-used that it’s easy to believe any information you’d ever want to know will be easily findable. If you have a question, just type it into Google and the answer will show up as clear as day.
But sometimes even the most innocuous details can be incorrect, and it's almost impossible to know when you've been deceived.
Let’s say you notice an old, cheap digital watch that you’ve probably seen a million times before -- the Casio F-91W -- and you wonder when the watch was first sold.
If you ask Google, the answer comes loud and clear: the Casio F-91W was released in 1991.
Google’s answer cites Wikipedia, the internet’s favorite source of quick-and-dirty research.
For those who hesitate to trust a crowd-sourced encyclopedia, there are plenty of other websites that provide the same answer. These sites include some of the most-trusted heavy-hitters in the journalism world, including the BBC, The Guardian, and Bloomberg.
Even a skeptical researcher would come to the obvious conclusion: the watch was released in 1991. Case closed.
Except they’re all wrong. Almost every resource on the internet that claims to know when the Casio F-91W was released is wrong.
The Casio F-91W was originally released in June 1989.
Casio’s own website has no information about when the watch was originally released, but there are a few online resources that back up this claim. PacParts Inc., Casio America’s parts supplier, lists the release date as 1989. The watch is also seen in digitized versions of old Argos catalogs dating back to 1990.
These little-visited pages are paltry proof in a sea of contrary information. But the best source is the company that produces the watch itself.
News 3 asked Casio America, and within minutes heard back from Customer Service agent Cheryle Wallace.
“The model F91W was originally released in 06/1989 and is currently selling on Casio.com,” Wallace told News 3 in an email.
The answer was readily-available. It didn't even take long for an official representative to give us the information.
So how did everyone else get it wrong?
The most likely answer is a well-documented phenomenon known as “citogenesis,” a term coined by professional cartoonist and ex-NASA roboticist Randall Monroe.
What happens is this: A random Wikipedia user adds false, unsourced information to an article. Nobody corrects the information for years, and eventually a writer uses Wikipedia as a resource for a story, mentioning the unsourced factoid.
Later, Wikipedia cites this very same misinformed publication as a source for the false information.
Now that the factoid has a legitimate-looking source, more and more writers treat the information as true. Eventually, the false information becomes repeated so often that it’s almost impossible to disprove.
The fake release date for the Casio F-91W follows the same format as the above hoaxes. On March 3 2009, Wikipedia user "2over0" edited the page about the watch to claim that it was introduced in 1991.
On April 26, 2011, a writer for BBC News Magazine wrote an article claiming that the watch was released in 1991. There are no earlier sources making that claim, meaning that it’s likely the writer found the information on Wikipedia. The very next day, Wikipedia user "Finlay McWalter" added the article as a source for the when the watch was first sold.
From there, the information spread. The iconic watch from the late 80s is now believed to be an iconic watch from early 90s.
Wikipedia itself specifically warns against using the popular encyclopedia as a source. But for something as innocuous as a release date, it’s often tempting for journalists to simply trust what Wikipedia says, leading to a cycle of circular reference that can be difficult to spot and untangle.
This is far from the first time this has happened -- there are multiple known cases of citogenesis. According to Wikipedia’s own list, inaccuracies on the site had various publications believing that Mike Pompeo served in the Gulf War, that Sacha Baron Cohen worked at Goldman Sachs, and that the white-nosed coati is known as “The Brazillian aardvark.”
The case of the Casio watch would likely have gone completely unnoticed if not for the efforts of a few watch enthusiasts digging up information.
But so far, a quirk of Wikipedia’s rules has prevented the false information from being changed.
Looking at the behind-the-scenes discussion on Wikipedia, much of the enthusiasts’ information comes from directly contacting parts suppliers and Casio representatives, which qualifies as “original research.”
Wikipedia’s citation guidelines don’t allow original research as a source. Only published “reliable sources” – sources such as mainstream newspapers, magazines, journals and books – are allowed.
This works so long as these reliable sources do their due diligence. But all it takes is one rushed reporter trusting an unsourced Wikipedia article for the entire system to break down into a self-perpetuating feedback loop of falsehood.
In the end, reporters for some of the world's most-respected news sources continue parroting false information for years, simply because of a single mistake made by an anonymous Wikipedia volunteer. While this case is relatively harmless, it shows how careless reporting can quickly result in a falsehood becoming widely-accepted as fact.
Like the other known cases of citogenesis, the false information surrounding this cheap watch will likely be cleared up soon. But the question remains: how much more misinformation from Wikipedia is still out there, undiscovered?
News 3 reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation for comment on the issue, but they did not respond by press time.
