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There was a specific number that was repeated across a lot of papers in my field, always citing the same source.
That source did have the number, but it cited another paper for it, which itself cited yet an older paper. Im not sure where the citations went bad, but that last paper for not actually contain the value everyone waschain-attributing to it.
The number was fortunately still correct though (and people would have noticed pretty quickly if it wasn't).
I was recently cited for quoting a statistic. Thankfully the statistic was accurate.
Now I am the xerox of a xerox.
Is that a situation where you can write up your analysis, report the number as correct... and start getting cited in place of the paper with broken attributions?