Editing Garbage in, garbage out (section)

==History==
The expression was popular in the early days of computing. The first known use is in a 1957 syndicated newspaper article about US Army mathematicians and their work with early computers,<ref name="newspapers">{{cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/50687334/the-times/|title=Work With New Electronic 'Brains' Opens Field For Army Math Experts|newspaper=The Hammond Times|date=10 November 1957|page=65|via=[[Newspapers.com]]|access-date=March 20, 2016}}</ref> in which an Army Specialist named William D. Mellin explained that computers cannot think for themselves, and that "sloppily programmed" inputs inevitably lead to incorrect outputs. The underlying principle was noted by the inventor of the first programmable computing device design:

{{Blockquote|On two occasions I have been asked, "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"&nbsp;... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.|[[Charles Babbage]]|''Passages from the Life of a Philosopher''<ref>{{cite book |last=Babbage |first=Charles |year=1864 |title=Passages from the Life of a Philosopher |publisher=Longman and Co. |page=67 |oclc=258982 }}</ref>}}

More recently, the [[Marine Accident Investigation Branch]] comes to a similar conclusion:

{{Blockquote|A loading computer is an effective and useful tool for the safe running of a ship. However, its output can only be as accurate as the information entered into it.|[[Marine Accident Investigation Branch|MAIB]]|''SAFETY FLYER Hoegh Osaka: Listing, flooding and grounding on 3 January 2015''<ref>{{cite web
|url=https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508444/HoeghOsaka_Flyer.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160325074446/https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/508444/HoeghOsaka_Flyer.pdf |archive-date=2016-03-25 |url-status=live|title=SAFETY FLYER|author=MAIB|date=2016-03-17|publisher=[[Marine Accident Investigation Branch|MAIB]]|access-date=2016-03-19}}</ref>}}

The term may have been derived from [[LIFO (computing)|last-in, first-out]] (LIFO) or [[first-in, first-out]] (FIFO).<ref name="worldwidewords">{{cite web|url=http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gar1.htm|title=Garbage in, garbage out|last=Quinion|first=Michael|date=5 November 2005|work=World Wide Words|access-date=2012-02-26}}</ref>