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 A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophisti ...

where an advocate appeals to an irrelevant, unqualified, unidentified, biased, or fabricated source in support of an argument.

Incorrect identification of source

One particular case of misattribution is the

Matthew effect The Matthew effect, sometimes called the Matthew principle or cumulative advantage, is the tendency of individuals to accrue social or economic success in proportion to their initial level of popularity, friends, and wealth. It is sometimes summar ...

. A

quotation A quotation or quote is the repetition of a sentence, phrase, or passage from speech or text that someone has said or written. In oral speech, it is the representation of an utterance (i.e. of something that a speaker actually said) that is intro ...

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 In sociology of science, obliteration by incorporation (OBI) occurs when at some stage in the development of a science, certain ideas become so universally accepted and commonly used that their contributors are no longer cited. Eventually, its ...

and

Churchillian Drift Churchillian Drift is the term, coined by British writer Nigel Rees, which describes the widespread misattribution of quotes by obscure figures to more famous figures, usually of their time period. The term connotes the particular egregiousness ...

). 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 A pseudepigraph (also :wikt:anglicized, anglicized as "pseudepigraphon") is a false attribution, falsely attributed work, a text whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. Th ...

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

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n media into reporting that

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

was Australia’s most naive city. Contextomy (

quoting out of context Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning. Context may be omitted intentionally or ...

) is a type of false attribution.

References

External links

Quote Investigator
{{Fallacies Verbal fallacies

Incorrect identification of source

Fallacy

See also

References

Further reading

External links