Android column ‘_id’ does not exist?

I see, the documentation for CursorAdapter states:

The Cursor must include a column named _id or this class will not
work.

The SimpleCursorAdapter is a derived class, so it appears this statement applies. However, the statement is technically wrong and somewhat misleading to a newbie. The result set for the cursor must contain _id, not the cursor itself.
I’m sure this is clear to a DBA because that sort of shorthand documentation is clear to them, but for those newbies, being incomplete in the statement causes confusion. Cursors are like iterators or pointers, they contain nothing but a mechanism for transversing the data, they contain no columns themselves.

The Loaders documentation contains an example where it can be seen that the _id is included in the projection parameter.

static final String[] CONTACTS_SUMMARY_PROJECTION = new String[] {
    Contacts._ID,
    Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME,
    Contacts.CONTACT_STATUS,
    Contacts.CONTACT_PRESENCE,
    Contacts.PHOTO_ID,
    Contacts.LOOKUP_KEY,
};
public Loader<Cursor> onCreateLoader(int id, Bundle args) {
    // ...
    return new CursorLoader(getActivity(), baseUri,
            CONTACTS_SUMMARY_PROJECTION, select, null,
            Contacts.DISPLAY_NAME + " COLLATE LOCALIZED ASC");
}