Factoids

In the introduction to his photobiography of Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer (1973) coined the term "factoid." A factoid is a speculation or guess that has been repeated so often that it is eventually taken for hard fact. Factoids have a particularly insidious quality - and one that is spectacularly unbiological - in that they tend to get stronger the longer they live. Unlike "facts," factoids are difficult to evaluate because, although they often begin as well-intended hypotheses and tentative clarifications, they become received wisdom by dint of repetition by authorities.

From Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations. by Norman Yoffee (Cambridge, 2005) pp. 7-8

Interestingly enough Merriam Webster defines factoid as:

1 : an invented fact believed to be true because of its appearance in print
2 : a briefly stated and usually trivial fact

It is probably due to educational television and "light" new media that the latter definition seems to have superseded the former, and while the latter is one of the chief mechanisms of the process by which a factoid is promoted, in the former sense of course. The utility of this word to mean a false fact that is believed through repetition is probably at an end.

We need a new word.

As an aside it would be good, for aesthetic purposes at least, to have a new word that is not attributable to the author of Armies of the Night, or the genre of photobiographys.