>---and most often simply parroting what's been written without
> checking the facts.

The worst example of this in the field of cant studies is the (almost 
universal) description of the work of Robert Copland, author of _The Highway 
to the Spittal House_ in 1530.  Copland is described, again and again, as 
writing doggerel, a description probably initiated by J.S.Farmer in _Musa 
Pedestris_ and limply repeated thereafter.

The joke behind this, other than one suspects that not everyone who accuses 
Copland of writing doggerel actually read him, is that Farmer not only 
prints a quite badly transcribed text of Copland (taken from Hazlitt the 
Younger) but accuses Dekker, who quotes Copland in _Lanthorne and 
Candlelight_ in 1608, of getting Copland's text wrong when it's Dekker and 
not Farmer who provides the correct text of the passage in question!

Julie Coleman naturally enough gets the text right, being a quite incredibly 
meticulous scholar, but she doesn't actually challenge Farmer's 
characterisation.  Equally, I think, unlike many, she doesn't repeat it. 
(Fairly enough -- her concern was with the glossaries in the texts she was 
working with rather than the texts themselves which might accompany the 
glosses.)

But yeah, repeating a mistake because it's too much trouble to check the 
original source seems to be endemic in all too many areas of scholarship.

            :-(

Robin