Ševčenko's law

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Ševčenko's law or Ševčenko's law of the dog and the forest is a way of describing the tendency of historians to repeat the coverage and the work of previous historians, to the disadvantage of general historical coverage.

The situation is compared to a dog and a forest. A dog going into a virgin forest picks a tree at random, and urinates against it. Despite the tree having no intrinsic outstanding attraction as an object for urinating against, other dogs subsequently entering the same forest will show a tendency to urinate against the same tree.