Lol, this same behavior comes up more often than you'd expect in academia too. Many many citations that nobody cross checks that also don't support the originally cited piece of information.
It's hilariously common online as well. Bullshitter makes a claim, someone calls them on the BS, they put up a link, and (lo and behold) the link when examined does nothing to defend the claim. Often the link directly contradicts the claim.
Yep..the online link posters hit close to home. Big reason I hardly even engage in discourse anymore. Got tired of verifying links that don't have the claimed content in them.
with the advantage that you can discover this by reading citations.
Yes, but it takes a lot of time to find a lie and very little time to conceive a lie. It's a losing battle as the percentage of honest citations drops (and it doesn't need to be a big drop to have a big impact.. think if the reliability of planes dropped 1%).