Fictitious entry

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Fictitious entries, also known as fake entries and Mountweazels, are deliberately wrong entries and articles in dictionaries, encyclopedias, maps and directories. Fake entries can be humorous hoaxes which are intended to be more or less quickly recognized as false by the reader while copyright traps are deliberately erroneous entries in a work inserted to facilitate detection of copyright infringement or plagiarism.

When looking up an entry in a reference work, one normally starts from an external reference to the subject. For an invented entry, no such reference exists. Therefore, one would typically stumble upon a fictitious entry only by chance. Some, however, are related closely enough to a factual subject that they are more likely to be found. For example, a fictitious entry in an otherwise non-fictional reference work might simply define or explain a term from a work of fiction, or give a biography of a character from a novel, or describe a fictional institution, without explaining that it is fictitious.

There does not appear to be any commonly used English-language term for this phenomenon. The neologism Mountweazel was coined by the magazine New Yorker, based on a false entry for Lillian Virginia Mountweazel in the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia.[1] The term Nihilartikel for a fictitious entry originated at the German Wikipedia[2] but was later identified as a hoax.[1]

Contents

[edit] Character

It is not always simple to recognize these. It is especially difficult when the same fictitious entry is reprinted and adapted by multiple reference works. In such cases, the multiple sources serve to bolster the entry's authenticity, so that many come to believe that they are reading a factual article.

Uncovering fictitious entries is a part of the game for editors and publishers. In some cases, the game can extend beyond a single work, as an academic parody or a satire is reproduced, quoted, or otherwise extended into multiple publications such as encyclopedias or science periodicals.

One can only speculate about fictitious entries that go undiscovered, especially once a work becomes very old. Katharina Hein writes, "Insiders assume that every encyclopedia contains wrong keywords."

There is great stylistic variance in fictitious entries: some are simple parodies that are easily seen through, but others are carefully constructed pastiches that imitate factual entries so well that they are very difficult to detect. Fictitious entries normally follow the same structure as a standard entry: biographies have a structure that is particularly identifiable, and therefore false biography articles are the most common type of fictitious entries.

[edit] Motivations for creation

Besides the obvious possibility of simple playful mischief, fictitious entries may be composed for other purposes. Chief among these is to catch copyright infringers. By including a trivial piece of false information in a larger work, it is far easier to demonstrate that someone has plagiarized that work: they will presumably copy the fictitious entry along with other articles.

This is very similar to the inclusion of one or more trap streets on a map or invented phone numbers in a telephone directory (neither of which is effective for copyright purposes in the United States; see Nester's Map & Guide Corp. v. Hagstrom Map Co., 796 F.Supp. 729, E.D.N.Y., 1992).[3] However, these traps may still be useful. Even if the trap cannot be used in a court, it still helps a business owner to detect other people's misconduct.

An outright forgery intended to mislead the reader on a matter of substance would not generally be classed as a mere fictitious entry.

[edit] Examples

[edit] Official sources

  • Most listings of the members of the German parliament (including its own website) feature the fictitious politician Jakob Maria Mierscheid, allegedly a member of the parliament since 1979. Among other activities he is reported to have contributed to a major stone-louse symposium in Frankfurt (see below).

[edit] Reference works

  • The German-language Der neue Pauly. Enzyklopaedie der Antike, edited by H. Cancik and H. Schneider, vol. 1 (Stuttgart, 1986, ISBN 3-476-01470-3) includes a fictitious entry now well-known amongst classicists: a deadpan description of an entirely fictional Roman sport, apopudobalia, which resembles modern football (soccer).
  • Appleton's Cyclopedia of American Biography (1887-89) contains about 200 fictitious entries.
  • Zzxjoanw was the last entry in Rupert Hughes’ Music Lovers’ Encyclopedia of 1903, and subsequent editions down to the 1950s, which was claimed to be a Maori word for a drum. It was later proved to be a hoax (not least because there is no Z, X or J in the Maori language).
  • The music-lexicographical works of Nicolas Slonimsky, most notably Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Music & Musicians inevitably contain fictitious entries; as Slonimsky was both extraordinarily precise and a specialist in the obscure, the extent of his inventions is unknown.
  • The 1975 New Columbia Encyclopedia contains a fictitious entry on Lillian Virginia Mountweazel (1942-73), purportedly an American photographer.
  • The first printing of the 1980 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians contains two fictitious entries. The first is on Guiglielmo Baldini, a non-existent Italian composer, and the second was on the subject of one Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup, who purportedly composed a small amount of music for flute. Esrum-Hellerup's surname derives from a Danish village and a suburb in Copenhagen. The two entries were removed from later editions, as well as from later printings of the 1980 edition. A third spurious entry, "Verdi, Lasagne", was apparently circulated among the editorial staff and nearly reached the printer, but was pulled at the last minute.[citation needed]
  • The New Oxford American Dictionary, in August 2005, gained media coverage[citation needed] when it was leaked that the second edition contained at least one fictional entry. This was later determined to be the word esquivalience, defined as "the willful avoidance of one’s official responsibilities," which had originally been added in the first, 2001, edition. It was intended as a copyright trap, as the text of the book was distributed electronically and thus very easy to copy.
  • The German-language medical encyclopedia Pschyrembel Klinisches Wörterbuch features an entry on the Steinlaus (Stone Louse, Petrophaga lorioti), a rock-eating animal. The scientific name implies the origin: a creation of the German humorist Loriot. The Pschyrembel entry was removed in 1996, but after reader protests readded the next year, with an extended section on the stone louse's involvement in the fall of the Berlin Wall.
  • The German-language Wikipedia contains an entry about a fictional insect called "Leuchtschnabelbeutelschabe".
  • The term Nihilartikel for a fictitious entry originated as an article name at the German Wikipedia and was later identified as a hoax. Not a single pre-Wikipedia reference could be found; however, the word was used in a published book and in other (non-mirror) contexts online, so ‚Nihilartikel‘ cannot any longer be considered a ‚Nihilartikel‘.
  • A fictitious Danish municipality called "Æblerød" was added to the English language wikipedia in January 2004. Before the entry was deleted 20 months later, it had made it into the Portuguese language wikipedia, and it has left a trail of over 700 Google hits as of December 2006.

[edit] April Fool's

  • Discover magazine frequently runs one fake article in their April edition as an April Fool's joke. The articles are often so outrageous that they are hard to miss, yet the next month's issue frequently has angry letters from readers who feel misled or quote bad science. Examples have included the discovery of the "Bigon"[4] (a subatomic particle the size of a bowling ball) and of the "Hotheaded Naked Ice Borer" (an Antarctic predator resembling a Naked Mole Rat that burrows through ice).
  • San Serriffe was originally the topic of an April Fool's article in The Guardian.
  • The American Science and Surplus catalog of educational and scientific supplies lists a "Find the fake catalog item" contest in the April edition of their catalog.
  • Scientific American usually has a hoax article each April, such as the disproof of the Four color theorem, and discovery of a computer made of ropes and pulleys by the ancient "Apraphulians". In an April 2005 editorial entitled "Okay, We Give Up", the magazine apologized for favoring evolution over creationism. [2]
  • The normally stately Economist occasionally runs April Fool's articles. Examples include articles on genetically engineered pet dragons, the adoption of a 10 hour day and the harmonization of EU birth rates.[3]

[edit] Culinary

  • Swedish Lemon Angels, an impossible recipe listed in How To Play With Your Food by Penn and Teller, wherein lemon juice is combined with sodium bicarbonate effecting an effervescent and messy chemical reaction. Whilst not intended as a copyright trap, the recipe has worked its way into many other recipe books and online databases, usually with no regard for the culinary worth of the end product.

[edit] Trivia books, etc.

  • The book The Golden Turkey Awards describes many bizarre and obscure films. The authors of the work state that one film described by the book is a complete hoax, and challenge readers to spot the made-up film. The book contains not one but two otherwise undocumented films; "Dog of Norway" and "Him".
  • The Trivia Encyclopedia placed deliberately false answers for a limited number of quiz questions, for copy-trap purposes; this was tested when the makers of Trivial Pursuit based some of their questions on the work.[5]
  • The Urban Legends Reference Pages (snopes.com) include a section entitled The Repository of Lost Legends, containing false discussions of made-up legends (for example, that the bear in the design of the Flag of California is the result of a handwritten note being misread and that it was meant to be a pear). The aim of the stories in the section is to caution readers against using appeals to authority, and encourage the checking of references for claims that seem unreasonable; the initials of "The Repository of Lost Legends" spell out TROLL.

[edit] Other

  • Australian archaeologist Tim Flannery's book Astonishing Animals, written in collaboration with painter Peter Schouten, describes some of the more outlandish animals alive on Earth. They caution that one of the animals is a product of their imagination and it is up to the reader to distinguish which one it is.
  • Author Isaac Asimov wrote The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline in 1948. At first glance it appears to be a genuine, highly complex, scientific essay; however on closer analysis one finds it is science fiction presented as a clever parody of opaque scientific writing.
  • The town of Agloe, New York was invented by map makers but eventually became a real place.
  • Each issue of the product catalogue for Swedish consumer electronics/hobby articles retailer Teknikmagasinet contains a fictitious product. Finding that product is a contest, 'Blufftävlingen', where the best suggestion for another fictitious product from someone who spotted the product gets included in the next issue.[4]

[edit] In fiction

A Fred Saberhagen Berserker science fiction short story, "The Annihilation of Angkor Apeiron" has a Berserker directed to a star system by an encyclopedia salesman. The salesman is put on trial for treason, but reveals that the encyclopedia article for the star system, with population figures, resources, etc., was a fictitious entry included in the encyclopedia to detect plagiarism; thus the Berserker actually ended up in an empty star system where it ran out of fuel and ceased to be a threat to humanity.

[edit] Related types of text

In contrast to fictitious entries, which are false information in a real encyclopedia, there are also literary encyclopedia fictions. For instance, in Jorge Luis Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", the narrator claims to have come across an encyclopedia entry for "Uqbar" in a copy of The Anglo American Cyclopaedia (New York, 1917), a pirated version of the Encyclopædia Britannica; later he encounters a volume of the (entirely imaginary) First Encyclopaedia of Tlön. The Borges story is laced with references to people and works, some of them real, others imaginary, any of them liable to send the reader to an encyclopedia (or, nowadays, the World Wide Web) for further information. It is quite possible that any number of fictitious entries might be available to convince the unwary reader of the factuality of some of Borges's fictional creations.

Borges often worked in other related forms, including literary forgeries (such as passages in the style of Emanuel Swedenborg or from the The Book of One Thousand and One Nights) and reviews of imaginary books.

In a similar vein, Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's 1983 book The Meaning of Liff created imaginary definitions for real British place-names, such as Huttoft and Mavis Enderby.

Penny Arcade webcomic scribes Tycho and Gabe created in 2005 an open Wiki detailing the fictitious book series Epic Legends of the Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga[6] which was (ostensibly) intended as a parody of popular fantasy fiction. Infamously, this "saga" was first attempted to be introduced into Wikipedia, only to be quickly excised as fancruft — prompting Tycho to bear a grudge to the digital encyclopedia.

Another similar phenomenon is the satiric work masquerading as non-fiction. Probably the best English-language example of the latter is Leonard C. Lewin's Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace,[7] widely misinterpreted as an actual think-tank report. A. P. Herbert wrote a series of imagined law reports called "Misleading Cases" in Punch, later republished in books, and wrote in the preface that he had been gratified to find some of them quoted as though actual court decisions. Similarly, some papers in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, a journal of parodies of scientific papers, are plausible enough to be mistaken for reality; a JIR article on atomic bomb construction was even reported to be taken seriously by a terrorist group.[citation needed] Articles in the parody newspaper The Onion have occasionally been picked up and reported as if they were genuine.

Sometimes ghost words (in Classics vox nihili) resulting from typos or misreadings can be treated as real words. An example was dord, that was defined in 1934's Webster's Second New International Dictionary as "density", but was actually a misreading of "D or d," an abbreviation for the word.

In the field of computer security, a "honeytoken" is an individual record, inserted into a database that includes sensitive information, which has no legitimate data and thus is extremely unlikely to ever be accessed legitimately.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Henry Alford, Not a word, New Yorker issue of August 29, 2005, posted to web July 22, 2005. Accessed August 31, 2006.
  2. ^ Original version of the German Wikipedia article Nihilartikel, 29 August 2004. The article has since been renamed as Fingierter Lexikonartikel.
  3. ^ Fred Greguras, U.S. Legal Protection for Databases, Presentation at the Technology Licensing Forum September 25, 1996. Archived March 1, 2005 on the Internet Archive.
  4. ^ The bigon - April Fool hoax article about a fundamental particle the size of a bowling ball - Brief Article originally from Discover, April 1996. Accessed on FindArticles.com, 31 August 2006.
  5. ^ Columbo’s First Name and The Supreme Court - The “Philip Columbo” Story on columbo-site.freeuk.com. Accessed 31 August 2006.
  6. ^ Epic Legends… site
  7. ^ Report From Iron Mountain at the Museum of Hoaxes. Accessed 31 August 2006. See also Lewin's Los Angeles Times obituary, reproduced online.
  • David Fallows: "Spoof", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed August 14, 2005), (subscription access)]
  • Henry Alford: :The Talk of the Town", The New Yorker (Accessed August 27, 2005), 29th August 2005 issue]
  • Michael Quinion: "Kelemenopy", World Wide Words (Accessed September 25, 2005)
  • Steve Burns: "The "Philip Columbo" story" Ultimate Columbo Site (Accessed March 7, 2006)

[edit] Further reading

The literature about fakes, parody, travesty and pastiche barely touches upon the phenomenon of the fictitious entries. This may be because reference books are not in the view of the people writing on these topics. Among the few exceptions are two German language articles:

  • Katharina Hein's "Der Orthodidakt" in Berliner Morgenpost, July 16, 2000
  • Michael Ringel's "Fehlerquelle" ("Sources of error"), in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, number 41, 1998
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