The act of citing a source to support a hypothesis and burying the reference in a footnote or endnote that, once investigated, turns out to be irrelevant, spurious or entirely fictitious.
Similar to quote-stuffing, a common practice in academic paper-writing, but not to be confused with
quote mining.
I was trying to track down that juicy reference that Malcolm Gladwell dropped about what Nietzsche said about cell phones but it turned out to be total quote-laundering.
