Careless editing of poems in history leads to misinformation spread.
Qian Zhong-shu suggests being cautious when reading poems selected by careless editors. He points out an example where editors only included early poems of a poet, ignoring later ones. The author investigates the spread of the poet's works over different dynasties and concludes that the omission was not due to carelessness, as the editors did not have access to the poet's later poems.