It really depends on the component. Something complex like a processor or radio will probably have errata in newer datasheets that fix errors in previous versions and those might take longer to make it out (especially if it’s someone like Qualcomm which doesn’t share all errata to all customers grumble grumble). Depending on how bad the error is and what you’re doing, that could be show stopping after you’ve sunk tons of NRE into it (DMA bugs on STM32 in the 2010s come to mind).
The provenance of the component is also really important. If it’s a ghost shift at a contract manufacturer producing the parts, they might have skimped on some part of the process (like packaging so that another subcontractor responsible for that step isn’t alerted) and the datasheet might be significantly inaccurate. I don’t know if these manufacturers ever bother to characterize their ghost shift parts enough to release their own datasheet but I assume it happens with especially popular parts. If the contract manufacturer loses the contract but keeps the ghost shift, they might be significantly out of date in revisions so you’d have to be careful to use only the datasheet they provide and not the one your engineers download from the first Google result (good luck!). In short, it’s complicated.
The most infamous example is probably the FTDI serial to usb chips that have been counterfeited for many years with varying quality, both by ghost shifts and manufacturers who reverse engineered the design to some degree.
The provenance of the component is also really important. If it’s a ghost shift at a contract manufacturer producing the parts, they might have skimped on some part of the process (like packaging so that another subcontractor responsible for that step isn’t alerted) and the datasheet might be significantly inaccurate. I don’t know if these manufacturers ever bother to characterize their ghost shift parts enough to release their own datasheet but I assume it happens with especially popular parts. If the contract manufacturer loses the contract but keeps the ghost shift, they might be significantly out of date in revisions so you’d have to be careful to use only the datasheet they provide and not the one your engineers download from the first Google result (good luck!). In short, it’s complicated.
The most infamous example is probably the FTDI serial to usb chips that have been counterfeited for many years with varying quality, both by ghost shifts and manufacturers who reverse engineered the design to some degree.