While working on articles for an IT client a few years ago, and I came across a staggering claim: 60 percent of small businesses that suffer a cyberattack close within the next six months. Wow, I thought, this could be an article by itself (my client specialized in serving small to mid-sized businesses).

So I went looking for the source. A Google search turned up dozens of mentions of the statistic, but few with any attribution. Some cited the National Cyber Security Alliance, so I used that to cross-reference, and discovered that in 2017, the NCSA had disavowed the claim: The org had once included the stat in an infographic, but it “was not generated from NCSA research, and we cannot verify its original source.”

In 2019, a reporter for SmallBizDaily wrote about the mysterious stat’s long journey, “bouncing from one website to another without anyone bothering to check where it came from.”

And some writers still aren’t checking, because it’s still making the rounds — including, hilariously, in this report on “myths” about small businesses and cybersecurity, where it’s stated as fact.

Another time, while researching an article on childhood development, I came across this claim: The amount of roughhousing children engage in predicts their achievement in first grade better than their kindergarten test scores. Fascinating, right? But like with the cyberattack anecdote, the claim was repeated on lots of web sites, sometimes attributed (in this case, to a professor), but with no other context.

I found the professor and emailed him. His response: “This is NOT accurate! Don’t quote me!” He quickly emailed twice more to make sure I’d seen his reply.

The writers who unwittingly repeated these (at best) misleading claims could have avoided the error with a little more research. Content writers without a background in journalism may not appreciate the importance of checking facts, even the ones that don’t seem to need checking. Or they might be pressed for time. A friend told me recently that his previous employer, a major player in its field, expected its content writers to crank out a 1,500-word reported piece every day. In those conditions, a lot of falsehoods can make it to the page.

Accuracy matters. Mistakes, especially easily avoided ones, damage your credibility. And if your content isn’t credible, it’s not only worthless to readers, it’s harmful to your brand.