The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in action? Will Jalopnik make the connection?

Question Jalopnik asks:

How Much Can CNN Get Wrong About F1 Engines, Physics In One Article?

The answer is apparently: quite a heck of a lot.

Question Jalopnik did not ask:

What else is CNN getting wrong?


The answer to that?  Well, Michael Crichton summed it up, God rest his soul:

“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.”

Man left us too soon.

(H/T: AoSHQ)

Moe Lane

4 thoughts on “The Gell-Mann Amnesia effect in action? Will Jalopnik make the connection?”

  1. Hahaha. I just came here right after I had read that article and the whole time I was reading it I was thinking “Gell-Mann”

  2. “What else is CNN getting wrong?”- Pretty much everything. Does anybody even watch them anymore? At least the person who wrote the article is somewhere where they are unlikely to be an immediate danger to themselves or someone else.

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