The Making of Myths
Questioning claims that are widely accepted in the technology industry. post 
Also, The Leprechauns of Software Engineering.
How folklore turns into fact and what to do about it.
by Laurent Bossavit. book
Despite protestations that they are backed by “decades of research,” these claims don’t actually have much supporting data. They are widely cited, but it turns out that very few people think it worth their time to locate the original sources of the research and check what the data actually said.
What I found was that these claims owed most of their popularity to what the webcomic xkcd dubbed “Citogenesis”. xkcd
The process goes like this: someone acknowledged as an Authority makes a fairly informal claim, like “defects cost exponentially more to fix over time.”
Later authors, looking to borrow the Authority’s authority, refer to the claim as “research.”
A further generation counts these indirect citations as if they were themselves original research: the claim now looks very strong, as it appears to be backed by multiple replications.
Citing "reports" from non-existent "institutes" isn't even the worst offense to common sense committed on a routine basis in my profession.
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Laurent goes on to discuss myths and tropes showing how these enter the trade literature to sustain the status quo. The antidote comes down to healthy skepticism and possibly tracking down original research.