Some years ago, I wrote an article for The Skeptic about a widely cited education study. Unfortunately, the research had had a fundamental flaw: it was never conducted.
Blogger Judge Starling writes about citations of another non-existent study: He notes:
‘”My wife is an historian and she has always cautioned me not to rely on second-hand quotations. Not ever! “You either read the papers you quote, or you quote the secondary reference.” ‘
peakmemory 
I thought only eighth grade students did that! My students knew they had to cite their sources of information. So on occation I would have a student randomly cite sources. My students knew I checked their sources but did not think I would actually read the source and compare it to what they put in their paper! Although the source actually exsisted, the content did not come close to what was in their paper!!
(please forgive spelling errors, forgot to check before posting! UGH)