While this Paul Graham article is interesting in and of itself as a "how to spot lazy reporters" guidebook, what I found striking was one of the tools he uses:

The secret to finding other press hits from a given pitch is to realize that they all started from the same document back at the PR firm. Search for a few key phrases and the names of the clients and the experts, and you'll turn up other variants of this story.

"Casual fridays are out and dress codes are in," writes Diane E. Lewis in The Boston Globe. In a remarkable coincidence, Ms. Lewis's industry contacts also include the creative director of GQ.

"Ripped jeans and T-shirts are out," writes Mary Kathleen Flynn in US News & World Report. And she too knows the creative director of GQ.

"Men's suits are back," writes Nicole Ford in Sexbuzz.Com ("the ultimate men's entertainment magazine").

"Dressing down loses appeal as men suit up at the office," writes Tenisha Mercer of The Detroit News.

Why so remarkable? Because this is exactly how scholars reasoned out the existence of the "Q" document as a primary, but lost, text about Jesus's teachings.

I wonder... if scholars used the whole panopoly of textual tests and theories developed over the years to tease out Q on modern news reports, would they be able to reconstruct the press releases those reports were based on? Since both exist and are (presumeably) easy to get at, this would be an elegant and falsifiable way to test this contentious academic issue.

Not that it'd shut up any fundamentalist out there, but it would provide a nice bulwark (or nasty knock) to the theory in academic circles. Certainly something an enterprising history grad student or doctoral candidate could build a thesis around.

Me? Oh hell I hate school. Maybe when I retire, assuming Olivia and/or Ellen don't make me stroke out before then.

Via Jason.