the worst thing that can happen to you as an editor is that a writer puts a quote in their article that is allegedly buy Mark Twain, and it's a pretty good quote that positively contributes to the article. you will spend at least the next six years looking for a source that actually says when and where he said it, and you'll run into dozens of other articles that just cite it as fact without any further information. every single time you go in thinking "surely this time I'll be able to find exactly where he said this," and every single time you end up having to cut it or add some half-hearted "a quote generally attributed to Mark Twain" nonsense. you're Charlie Brown with the football, except the football was a hologram the whole time and you never had any legs
that, or when you do find the source where the person almost said it, but the quote on the page has gone through about five telephone-game stages of being prettied up, sanitized, outright paraphrased -- and yet they almost said it, making it even harder to convince the writer (who may be ~*attached*~ to the fake quote) or the editor before you (who is likely behind schedule and stetting anything not catastrophic) that the change should be made