A line built to resemble a diagnostic record and a line that is one can share every visible feature: the same command, the same shape of field, a value that would have been just as believable as the one that actually came back. In the one case behind this page, nothing about the reconstruction marked it as one until it was checked against the record. That is what makes it worth checking against the right thing.
What actually catches it
Reading the reconstructed line on its own doesn’t catch it: a well-made reconstruction reads fine by itself. What catches it is comparison against the record the event itself produced, rather than a summary of that record written afterward. Here, that meant going to the primary record directly, not the compressed account already written from it.
The distinction it rests on
The fix replaces the reconstructed line outright, with “the literal recorded output instead of a plausible-sounding equivalent” of it. Here, only the record settled which one the line was.
What this doesn’t establish
The one case behind this claim shows the gap opening once, and one comparison against the original record closing it. How often a plausible reconstruction goes unchecked, and why the invented detail was written in rather than left blank, aren’t things this instance settles either way.
Told as it happened, the night this came from is in Awakening.