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TIL about the Gell-Mann amnesia effect; when experts find articles published within their field to be full of errors, but trust articles about other fields in the same publication (en.m.wikipedia.org)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Here’s how it was originally described:

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.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's a fun concept but a little bit "just so".

Sure, we typically discount everything that a single unreliable individual says. But a newspaper is not one person — it's a collection of articles from different authors. If the science articles are inaccurate, that doesn't mean the political articles will be!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

that doesn't mean the political articles will be!

The idea is that it means there's no reason to trust anything the paper says. However, that doesn't go far enough.

If you read an article in a paper about something you have direct knowledge of, and you can confirm the article is factually correct, that still doesn't mean anything else in the paper can be trusted.

You can't really trust anything. For all you know, I'm a guinea pig who managed to steal a cell phone to post on the Internet. I'm not, of course. That would be impossible. However, how would you know?