Last but not least: Improving general knowledge

Here we go again: shortly after the father disposed of the twenty-volume Brockhaus with the words "there are just as good reference works on the Internet today!", Wikipedia is once again exposed as being very susceptible to sabotage. An Irish student has admitted to having attributed fictitious quotes to the recently deceased composer Maurice Jarre on Wikipedia. Several major newspapers used the false quotes for their obituaries. In an article for the Irish Times on Thursday, 22-year-old sociology and economics student Shane Fitzgerald explained that he had wanted to find out how much journalists relied on the internet for a student research project. He had assumed that at best internet forums or smaller newspapers would fall for his manipulations. But he was wrong: quality newspapers in England, India, America and Australia fell for it. In the Wikipedia entry, the student had put the following words in Jarre's mouth: "When I die, there will be a last waltz playing in my head that only I can hear."