4 ms·

> Live Science...Business Insider...CNN...Daily Mail They all got this horribly wrong, but a lot of people who understand enough about biology to know why will

> Live Science...Business Insider...CNN...Daily Mail They all got this horribly wrong, but a lot of people who understand enough about biology to know why will still trust their coverage of other areas they are less expert in. Michael Crichton called it Gell-Mann Amnesia. [0] [0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann#Quotes_about_Gell-Mann https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann#Quotes_about_...

perseusprime11 9y ago
Which is why I don't read or watch those news orgs.
gpm 9y ago
Here's the problem, every non subject specific media company I've tried getting my news from is guilty of being horrifying wrong like this on one story or another. Generally they seem to do so with fairly high frequency. So my alternatives are read and to some extent trust them anyways, or just not get news on topics I'm unfamiliar with.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  I'm increasingly convinced that any organization without a specific 'beat' is hopeless. Not only are they bad at the topic, it's hard to spot because they're good at newswriting - often you'd have to already know the story to catch the errors. I've got half a dozen tech news sources I kind of trust (as in, trust that I can usually spot their errors) - Ars, Techdirt, and their ilk are all at least useful. WaPo/NYT/etc are largely subject-specific to US politics, but in denial about it, so that's workable. Physics and biology news I'm largely reduced to reading blogs and asking friends. I've found ways of making this work for lots of things, but medicine and foreign affairs are the two that give me fits. Medicine, like social psychology, is full of headlines reading "X causes Y!" over studies finding "X correlates with Y at p=0.30". I end up just reading the damn studies myself, which is obviously not efficient or trustworthy. And foreign affairs is basically hopeless. I'm easily 5 removes away from facts at when reading an English-language story about, say, Saudi domestic politics. There's effectively no 'ground truth' to access, because every source I can compare to has its own issues. It's honestly sort of baffling when I hear people talk about those topics like they're fully-informed; I'm not sure how anyone who isn't an actual expert in the specific foreign affair in question works up that kind of confidence.
  - ikeboy 9y ago
    Some people at least read through many sources on the same issue, maybe they're all in English but some will dig deep into sources and from multiple points of view. I think it's possible to do, just takes time.
    - Bartweiss 9y ago
      It's certainly a better approach than trying to find one trustworthy source in isolation; there's a lot to be said for an adversarial system of newsreading. With non-Western affairs, I try this but feel like I still struggle with obscured facts and deep-seated agendas. The errors and biases in multiple accounts of a domestic issue can often be subtracted out, but English coverage of complex foreign issues has bigger complications. Distinct authors work from the same erroneous primary source, or all make the same cultural misunderstanding on the same point, or all lack key context that wasn't international news. Coverage of topics like the war in Syria is often mind-bendingly bad, and I end up running down primary sources even when I can trust them, just for context. (A concrete example: many stories about refugees in Raqqa listed populations and areas that would have left the surviving city more densely populated than Kowloon, but no one seemed to bother doing that division.) It's vastly better than it used to be, though. Total inaccuracy is much less of a threat in a world pervaded by English-speaking internet users. I feel surrounded by sloppy, unhelpful media, but I at least have enough information to get that feeling. Stories like the Western media's misunderstanding of the USSR in the 1930s give some perspective on what it looks like to be so comprehensively wrong that you can't even tell there's a problem.
    - gpm 9y ago
      This article is a perfect example of why that doesn't work. All the journalists are working from the same source, and copying from eachother, so they all make the same fundamental mistakes. It helps filtering for intentional spin, but not much with reporters just being flat out wrong.
aaron695 9y ago
> Gell-Mann Amnesia Except this is totally not true. Unless you are an expert (Which you imply you are not) then it's totally irrelevant. Here it's called appling common sense. You are totally missing the real issue. Why don't you apply common sense to other articles? This is absolutely not Gell-Mann Amnesia. Common sense is knowing the Russians will KNOW a rare nerve agent used on a ex-spy in England will be found out and it repercussions would be huge. Common sense is knowing the real story is not being told. Gell-Mann Amnesia would be knowing what the real story is. (A faction of the Russia military is making a play? Someone in the Russian machine over extended? etc)
jsl1212 9y ago
That's an interesting quote from Crichton. I think the safest assessment of any given publication is to regard its credibility as only being as good as its worst story. Like Crichton said, should we really take CNN seriously in any subjects if they're saying space turned Scott Kelly into a mutant?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mulmen 9y ago
  I would hope the average HN reader has a higher capacity for critical thought than a binary decision to blackball an entire news source. if you really do what you are saying here you won't read any source on anything, ever.
  - jsl1212 9y ago
    Regarding a source's credibility and ignoring it outright are two different things entirely. I was just agreeing with Crichton that publications need to be held to a consistent standard across all areas of coverage.
    - mulmen 9y ago
      That's a fair distinction. I would apply that reputation to the author and possibly aggregate that for the outlet though. I don't think it's as easy as judging CNN as a whole based on a single piece.

perseusprime11 9y ago

Which is why I don't read or watch those news orgs.

gpm 9y ago

Here's the problem, every non subject specific media company I've tried getting my news from is guilty of being horrifying wrong like this on one story or another. Generally they seem to do so with fairly high frequency. So my alternatives are read and to some extent trust them anyways, or just not get news on topics I'm unfamiliar with.

Bartweiss 9y ago
I'm increasingly convinced that any organization without a specific 'beat' is hopeless. Not only are they bad at the topic, it's hard to spot because they're good at newswriting - often you'd have to already know the story to catch the errors. I've got half a dozen tech news sources I kind of trust (as in, trust that I can usually spot their errors) - Ars, Techdirt, and their ilk are all at least useful. WaPo/NYT/etc are largely subject-specific to US politics, but in denial about it, so that's workable. Physics and biology news I'm largely reduced to reading blogs and asking friends. I've found ways of making this work for lots of things, but medicine and foreign affairs are the two that give me fits. Medicine, like social psychology, is full of headlines reading "X causes Y!" over studies finding "X correlates with Y at p=0.30". I end up just reading the damn studies myself, which is obviously not efficient or trustworthy. And foreign affairs is basically hopeless. I'm easily 5 removes away from facts at when reading an English-language story about, say, Saudi domestic politics. There's effectively no 'ground truth' to access, because every source I can compare to has its own issues. It's honestly sort of baffling when I hear people talk about those topics like they're fully-informed; I'm not sure how anyone who isn't an actual expert in the specific foreign affair in question works up that kind of confidence.
- ikeboy 9y ago
  Some people at least read through many sources on the same issue, maybe they're all in English but some will dig deep into sources and from multiple points of view. I think it's possible to do, just takes time.
  - Bartweiss 9y ago
    It's certainly a better approach than trying to find one trustworthy source in isolation; there's a lot to be said for an adversarial system of newsreading. With non-Western affairs, I try this but feel like I still struggle with obscured facts and deep-seated agendas. The errors and biases in multiple accounts of a domestic issue can often be subtracted out, but English coverage of complex foreign issues has bigger complications. Distinct authors work from the same erroneous primary source, or all make the same cultural misunderstanding on the same point, or all lack key context that wasn't international news. Coverage of topics like the war in Syria is often mind-bendingly bad, and I end up running down primary sources even when I can trust them, just for context. (A concrete example: many stories about refugees in Raqqa listed populations and areas that would have left the surviving city more densely populated than Kowloon, but no one seemed to bother doing that division.) It's vastly better than it used to be, though. Total inaccuracy is much less of a threat in a world pervaded by English-speaking internet users. I feel surrounded by sloppy, unhelpful media, but I at least have enough information to get that feeling. Stories like the Western media's misunderstanding of the USSR in the 1930s give some perspective on what it looks like to be so comprehensively wrong that you can't even tell there's a problem.
  - gpm 9y ago
    This article is a perfect example of why that doesn't work. All the journalists are working from the same source, and copying from eachother, so they all make the same fundamental mistakes. It helps filtering for intentional spin, but not much with reporters just being flat out wrong.

aaron695 9y ago

> Gell-Mann Amnesia Except this is totally not true. Unless you are an expert (Which you imply you are not) then it's totally irrelevant. Here it's called appling common sense. You are totally missing the real issue. Why don't you apply common sense to other articles? This is absolutely not Gell-Mann Amnesia. Common sense is knowing the Russians will KNOW a rare nerve agent used on a ex-spy in England will be found out and it repercussions would be huge. Common sense is knowing the real story is not being told. Gell-Mann Amnesia would be knowing what the real story is. (A faction of the Russia military is making a play? Someone in the Russian machine over extended? etc)

jsl1212 9y ago

That's an interesting quote from Crichton. I think the safest assessment of any given publication is to regard its credibility as only being as good as its worst story. Like Crichton said, should we really take CNN seriously in any subjects if they're saying space turned Scott Kelly into a mutant?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 9y ago
I would hope the average HN reader has a higher capacity for critical thought than a binary decision to blackball an entire news source. if you really do what you are saying here you won't read any source on anything, ever.
- jsl1212 9y ago
  Regarding a source's credibility and ignoring it outright are two different things entirely. I was just agreeing with Crichton that publications need to be held to a consistent standard across all areas of coverage.
  - mulmen 9y ago
    That's a fair distinction. I would apply that reputation to the author and possibly aggregate that for the outlet though. I don't think it's as easy as judging CNN as a whole based on a single piece.