The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

[JimT]

"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
– Michael Crichton (1942-2008)

[AJMD429]

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Yes - for sure - once a 'news' source loses credibility in a topic I know, I assume they lack credibility in all other areas. It may not be intentional in the case of topics they don't know much about, but the lack of integrity exhibited in one area surely translates to other areas, so even in areas they 'know' I'd still not trust them.

The 'big four' medical journals (NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, and Lancet) have ALL shown themselves to lack integrity.

[samsi]

I figured out long ago that the media is pretty clueless on most subjects, but didn't know that smarter people than me had named it!

[piller]

Every time I hear the media tell us we are a democracy, that it is a democratic party, that the government is ruling us, then I lose faith in the media all over again.

[AJMD429]

Every time I hear the media tell us we are a democracy, that it is a democratic party, that the government is ruling us, then I lose faith in the media all over again.

One thing I do when a teenager comes in for a physical is ask them "What are your plans after High School...?"

There is no correct answer, really - I just want to see if they have SOME kind of interest, goal, or motivation, plus it is just part of engaging them as a person and getting them used to communicating in a medical environment (a bit less intrusive than starting off asking about their bowel movements or depression or sex life).

The worst thing I see is that some of them have zero thought about future goals, and express no 'interests'.

But the second-worst-thing I see is that some of them say "I think I want to go into journalism...".

Honestly the ones who say that tend to be the less-intelligent and less-moral in their behaviors.

Thankfully there are a few exceptions, such as the young guy exposing the Somali fraud.

[bmtshooter]

Shortly after I finished college (over 50 years ago now), my parent's home was burglarized and torched. There was an article in the newspaper about it a few days later. The only factual information in the article was that the house burned on the day specified in the article. The rest of the article was "almost truths". If we had not already known what had happened, we would have come away with an entirely different idea of what had actually transpired. In that case it was not an intentionally misleading story, just sloppy reporting. Since that article was published, I read all things with one eye open to the possibility that what is on the page could most likely be "truth challenged".

[Bill in Oregon]

I am sorry you all feel this way. I entered the University of Oregon as a German major (!!!) and quickly changed my major to journalism -- and newspaper journalism in particular. Every hour of every day of my professional life I did all I could to ensure the factuality of the stories I edited or placed, although it was impossible to make educated corrections in the 40 or 50 wire stories I might process in a shift. Presenting the absolute truth was always my goal, though often unattainable thanks to my own limitations and the volume of information dealt with. But I always kept the "BS meter" on and was particularly on the lookout for firearms-related errors -- so much so that reporters routinely sought me out to verify that they had gotten gun-related details in their stories correct.
At this late date I am still proud of the effort I put into it -- and ashamed of all the "non-lamestream" information sources people now choose from that are bent and filtered to fit their own skewed world-views.
And I am proud of the daily papers that were once the common currency of communities across America, delivered by paper boys and paper girls, thumping as they land on the doorstep, chock full of local news and police reports, editorials written by someone you might meet in church or at the grocery store, letters to the editor by all the beloved community nuts, and with an obituary page that everyone nervously checked each morning or afternoon. And don't forget the Sunday comics.
It seems to be a great new American pastime -- kicking the old community newspaper in the nuts when it is mostly already dead. I don't find it funny at all.

[AJMD429]

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There are great journalists - the young kid Nick Shirley, Tucker Carlson, the Triggernometry guys, and many many others.

It's just that the lousy ones used to get nowhere, and now they are promoted to CNN and MSNBC and positions at least allegedly 'respectable'.

It's just a phenomenon of the decay of the US - same thing has happened to doctors - the crappy ones used to flounder and wind up in sore-throat clinics where they couldn't hurt people too much - now they run hospital departments.

Probably the same in most fields. I think likely we're seeing it in law enforcement, teaching, and many other fields.

The difference with journalism is it affects so many people - doctors mostly harm the sick, cops mostly harm the minor lawbreaker, teachers only harm their students, but journalists have exposure to the entire population due to the new media.

[piller]

Samuel Clemens, also known as Mark Twain, was a newspaper man. My favorite quote from him is: "If you don't read newspapers, then you are uninformed. If you do read newspapers, then you are misinformed.". It was true then, and is true today. When I still lived in Liberal, Kansas, we had a Sheriff who got good publicity from the local paper. Turned out that Chuck was running drugs for a cartel, and was paying the Editor for favorable press. Funny, but all of the High Schoolers knew it.

I used to take the Dallas Morning News. I contacted them multiple times on factual errors. Most often on chemistry, physics, and pharmaceutical errors. I did get the editor once. I was told that my having information showing that an article on what was called fenfen was incorrect was terrifying. I had already explained that I am a Pharmacist, and that the sources I was citing were all peer reviewed studies published by major Universities as well as one by Mayo Clinic. To be told that accurate information was terrifying gave me a new understanding into that editor's mindset. Pondimin, one of the two drugs in fenfen, is no longer available due to being harmful. Those studies I was referencing were available several years before the FDA took action. They were easily found at the time of the call.
That same Newspaper called each and every firearm found at crime scenes an automatic revolver for almost 5 years. I guess Sam Spade was the lead Detective during that time period.

[Bill in Oregon]

But February made me shiver
With every paper I delivered
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

These lines take me back 60 years to when I helped friends and cousins deliver newspapers on frosty mornings. And the worst news on the doorstep in my lifetime?
From the Tacoma News Tribune, November 22, 1963, in 200-point bold caps:
"SNIPER'S BULLET
KILLS KENNEDY!"

[earlmck]

And the worst news on the doorstep in my lifetime?
From the Tacoma News Tribune, November 22, 1963, in 200-point bold caps:
"SNIPER'S BULLET
KILLS KENNEDY!"

I think you nailed her there Bill. That was a major inflection point when the "Deep State" or the "Matrix" or whatever you want to call it showed that they were in control and we no longer had the Republic that we thought we lived in. Has taken me an awful long time to make that realization.

On another note, our little local paper struggling along, has dropped down to a "weekly", but still does good accurate stories on the news of the town and the county. Maybe the real journalists are stuck in the sticks while the charletens go on to careers with the national media?

[Bill in Oregon]

Earl, I just read that story in the Central Oregonian about the young farmer from Powell Butte who died digging a well in 1905. Sad stuff. Glad you still have your paper.
https://centraloregonian.com/2026/01/02 ... ging-well/