Professor's apparent request to student for fake data published by mistake

Re:Professor's apparent request to student for fake data pub... by jholman on Thursday August 08, 2013 @10:47PM (#6183431)

When physical objects are fabricated, it means they're created. "Fabricated" never means "of fraudulent provenance", like your iPhone example.

When statements-which-purport-to-be-facts are fabricated, it means they're falsified. So "his claim (that these phones are iPhones) was fabricated" does mean that the phones are not truly iPhones.

As I consider it, this makes some sense; you cannot create a fact, but you can create a physical object, and you can create a lie. Things like an analysis are on the border. And indeed, my intuition as a native speaker accepts "fabricate an analysis" in either sense.

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Re:Professor's apparent request to student for fake data pub... by gojomo on Friday August 09, 2013 @05:29AM (#6184590)

Never say never; I think most American speakers would find that the 'fabricated iPhones' noun phrase implies that the iPhones are counterfeits. Otherwise the adjective would be awkwardly unnecessary – all iPhones are already manufactured. So, it must be there to emphasize (or at least hint at) the other meaning of 'fabricated'.

It's a little bit of an uncommon/sloppy usage, but still clear... more likely to appear in impromptu speech than writing.

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