People does not like to be bothered with facts.
Particularly if it is easier to quote a "factoid" or
a persistent rumour.
"The Edsel was a failure".
In the idiotic movie, "Peggy Sue Got Married", whose
plot I have mercifully forgotten, a woman goes
back into her past and when her dada shows
up with a new car, she mournfully says,"Oh, Dad,
you bought an Edsel!"
Now, number uno, if this was an incident from her past,
what kind of bozo was she that she didn't remember that?
Numero tuo, if her dad bought it, then that was at least one
off the showroom floor, and he didn't seem, in the context
of the flick, to be an innovator. That means that at least
a couple of his buds had done same thing.
Compared to some of the eggs laid by Henry Ford the first in
the youthful days of his career, the Edsel was a blazing success.
But people do not want to be bothered with facts.
It destroys the flow of their conversation to be interrupted
with footnotes and corrections.
Poor things. They suffer so.