Not that it's the result of anyone's incompetence or dishonesty at all; it just happens. One author or historian gets a fact wrong for whatever reason, and everyone else just piles on, until 20 years later the mistaken story is accepted as fact.
For instance, conventional wisdom in the UFO world says that Dr. Hynek served as a consultant to the Air Force on all three incarnations of its UFO research group: Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. This is not so. I have discovered that Hynek only worked on Project Sign and Project Blue Book. He was so late with his final report for Project Sign, however, that by the time he submitted it, Project Sign had morphed into Project Grudge, and his report was included in the Grudge final report.
Don't feel bad if you got that one wrong. When I mentioned it the other day to Mark Rodeghier, the man who now maintains Hynek's UFO research organization, CUFOS, he chuckled and said, "Yea, I had that one wrong for a long time!"
Now, let's take the case of the "unidentified flying object." When the modern era of flying saucer activity began in 1947, the terms "unidentified flying object" and "UFO" didn't yet exist. Kenneth Arnold, the pilot who started the whole kerfuffle in the summer of '47, said the objects he saw in the sky moved like saucers skipping across the water. An enterprising reporter coined the term "flying saucer" and it stuck. Over time it was sometimes changed to "flying disk," but there it remained for several years.
Conventional wisdom in the UFO world states that the term "unidentified flying saucer" was coined in 1951 by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who ran the Air Force's flying saucer investigation unit, Project Blue Book. But I am about to prove that conventional wisdom is once again--"ahem"--wrong.
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Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, USAF: Good Guy
Here's what Wikipedia says in its write-up about Captain Ruppelt: "He is generally credited with coining the term 'unidentified flying object', to replace the terms 'flying saucer' and 'flying disk' - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be 'misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance.'"
WRONG.
Google Books, in its blurb about Ruppelt's 1956 book "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects," says, "Ruppelt, who coined the term 'unidentified flying objects' and headed Project Blue Book from 1951 to 1953, includes his personal investigations and findings in his extensive research on UFOs."
WRONG.
Even Hynek got it wrong in his 1975 book "The Edge of Reality," co-authored with Dr. Jacques Vallee. On page "x "of the Introduction, the authors state "The term UFOs was not employed until Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, coined the term."
WRONG.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
So, what is the truth? The truth is, there is a U.S. Government document in one of the many archives in which I've been doing my research (and there are 5 now) that referred to these buggers as "unidentified flying objects." This document was written on "December 19, 1948", well over two years before Captain Ruppelt had anything to do with flying saucers.
No knock against Captain Ruppelt. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest good guys in UFO history, and left the Air Force with a long list of accomplishments of which to be proud. This just isn't one of them.
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