It lies with authors, editors, and publishers who fail to set up defenses and fail to correct errors. The answers may be as connected to tradition as to logic. At magazines, by tradition, many publishers have considered writers as partners in an ongoing enterprise. Most magazine publishers pick up the cost of litigation stemming from alleged inaccuracy. Book publishers, however, have tended to view writers as suppliers of information, which the publisher then markets, as a grocer markets the farmer's eggs.
Book editors concede that careless or duplicitous authors often go undetected.
A lot of very famous authors are really quite sloppy. If a book is reviewed positively, the editor basks, deservedly, in reflected glory. But if the book is questioned on accuracy grounds the editor, by publishing tradition, is absolved. In the book world, editors stress, accuracy is the author's responsibility. The standard book contract says so.