Citation Laundering

Citation laundering — also discussed under labels like *citation plagiarism*, *secondhand citation*, or *the lazy author syndrome* — is the practice of citing a primary source you have not actually read, on the basis of how that source is described or quoted in some intermediate work. The citing author lists the primary in their references as if it were a source they consulted, but their actual evidence chain runs through whoever cited it first. This is a recognized integrity problem because it propagates misreadings: any error or selective quotation introduced by the intermediate work flows undetected into every downstream paper that inherits the citation. The U.S. Office of Research Integrity explicitly identifies citing sources that were not read or thoroughly understood as a citation-ethics problem. Empirical surveys of citation behavior find the practice is common, particularly among early-career researchers, who report backing up claims based on abstracts alone or citing reviewed sources without reading them. The ethical fix is straightforward: cite what you actually read, and when you must rely on a secondhand reference, signal it with a "cited in" or equivalent disclosure rather than presenting it as direct consultation. The structural fix is harder, because citation counts and Goodhart's law reward volume rather than verified reading.