Good work with this, and the linked "special register groups" post.

I find myself intermittently fascinated with the origin and spread of certain ideas, which can often be hard to track. It's probably a bit simpler when it's a very specifically wrong idea.

Happens a lot. Cr2Gr2Te6 is a particularly egregious example, but whenever a claim is made in a textbook or well-cited journal article, that claim is going to be repeated.

I've got a funny example. It's said that "Ytterbium (Yb) is sometimes alloyed with stainless steel to improve its mechanical properties, such as strength and durability." This claim has been repeated 1000 times. It's one of the best known "properties" of Yb. But there is no factual basis for it -- there are no commercial grades of stainless steel that incorporate Yb, there's no published research on Yb as an alloying constituent in stainless steel, and as far as I can tell it started as a throwaway line in a textbook that was probably just a mistake or misunderstanding...