When bad knowledge spreads. Follow my analogy here, let's say you pose the question "what is the volume of the oceans" in a forum, chatroom, or elsewhere on the web and it receives one response, but let us say that one response is wrong. Within an hour the post is buried in piles of other posts and simply forgotten in virtual cyberspace. Later you pull up the discussion to see what the answer is and you notice that there is only one response. You instantly place weight on this answer because you believe it to be right--otherwise someone would have offered a correction. The only way around this is to offer a verified option that allows another individual to verify the response. Now, at least, you have two opinions claiming the answer is correct. Questions without such verification need to be accepted with general skepticism