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Or a journalist saw a chance to get famous quickly and didn't bother to verify the sources.

The story was so good that everyone wanted it to be true and nobody said that it looks like an incoherent mess.

No journalist gets to publish stories on their own. Stories always have internal review with at least the relevant editor, and big stories get multiple levels. The authors worked on it for months. If this was a case of rushing it out without enough verification, then there's many more than just the two journalists at fault.

Which is totally possible, but normal journalistic practices already exist to prevent just what you suggest, and are the norm, not the exception.

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