[majos]

I don't quite get the claim behind the Gell-Mann effect. It assumes that because journalism about physics is inaccurate and oversimplified, journalism about everything else is too.

But why should this be? Physics, and similar hard sciences, are deep and complex fields. There's plenty of math, jargon, and a long literature. Of course inaccurate simplifications happen when writing about it for a popular audience. Add in the weird incentives of mass media and the lack of scientific expertise among most journalists, and it makes sense that popular physics news is not so accurate.

In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are often literal reporting of what people do. I'm not saying any of these areas is necessarily simple, but they are at the root level about human actors, not abstract quantities that most people have 0 intuition for. So I expect that it's actually easier to do good reporting on those topics.

[rayiner]

Politics and business are incredibly complicated as well. In many ways it’s even harder to do reporting in those areas because there is no expert consensus you can consult. Is lowering corporate taxes better for the economy? There is little consensus. Even reporting “what people did” can be fraught with peril. (E.g. reporting that a company “paid no taxes” without addressing loss carry forwards.) Political and business systems, and in particular complex regulatory regimes like tax policy, are the product of many decades of refinement. Because journalists for the most part are ignorant of that history, they present every policy issue in this sort of context free way, leaning heavily on narrative and emotion to make up for their shallow understanding of the actual mechanics of what they’re writing about.

[untog]

I think where the comparison breaks down is that the laws of physics are the laws of physics. Reporting on them doesn't change them. But politics lives in the same world as reporting. It is shaped by it, politicians respond to it. So the Gell-Mann effect isn't quite accurate in that situation. Journalists do know the political world deeply because for better or worse they're involved in shaping it.

[aetherson]

I don't think it follows that people must necessarily know a lot about things they have a relatively large influence over.

[xmprt]

Your comment illustrates the point even more in my opinion. You understand more about physics than politics, sports, and business, and so you're able to see how journalists can get it wrong. However, if you actually dived into the world of sports and similar fields about "human actors" there's a lot of interpersonal relations and complexity that can't be described in a 500 word article. If journalists were just reporting about the "what" then physics would be just like reporting sports scores if you just copy the result. When you try to explain the "how" and "why" then all the complexity that you described about physics applies to sports.

[majos]

Maybe my original point was vague: I'm arguing that the "what" is simpler when human actors are involved. Person x said this, did this, accomplished that. The story is for the most part straightforward and understandable. And a lot of the reporting in these areas is just "what".

But people don't even have a good handle on the "what" of a lot of science (what are these new particles? what is p vs np?) which is why we get all these analogical half understandings.

[wcunning]

I think the bigger question in a lot of human centric things is the "why" -- why did that head of state say that thing? Why does this company avoid that regulation? Why do people complain when this tax credit goes away? It's not reasonable to stop with the "what" in many situations. Or alternatively, the comparison to physics should be an article saying that the what is the spin of a single electron in an experiment, even though the experiment is about gravity -- missing the point entirely.

And backtracking slightly to my grandparent comment, Gell-Mann was coined by Michael Creighton who in the same quote compared Murray Gell-Mann's knowledge of physics to Creighton's knowledge of show business. The "what you know well enough to spot errors" can be anything as can the "what you blindly trust the reporter on out of your own ignorance."

[Erlich_Bachman]

> I'm arguing that the "what" is simpler when human actors are involved.

Where would you get that idea? It is definitely the other way around.

In hard sciences at least you can easily construct experiments and find out truths with time, which while complex, are basically predictable. In human sciences everything is much more complex and chaotic effects and problems with definitions and inherent unpredictability of humans make everything more complicated.

[liability]

> In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are often literal reporting of what people do.

I was once in a local paper for my participation in a sports team. Well, my picture was. The name given to me in the article and caption was fabricated. Such a name didn't even belong to anybody else in my school, let alone on the same team!

I assume the 'reporter' was too drunk to remember my name and too embarassed to ask somebody, so he just made one up.

[DoreenMichele]

I was interviewed via email while still homeless. They assumed I was male without asking, then just made up quotes. Because the interview was by email, I have a written record of what I actually said, so I know it was outright fabricated and not some kind of misheard/misunderstood thing.

I sort of understand the misgendering. Most visible street people are male. But the fabricated quote made me feel like "They think they can just do anything they want because I'm so poor." That felt like intentionally shitty behavior.

[zaroth]

Don't worry, they do the same thing to everyone, including the President. Making up quotes, that is.

[DoreenMichele]

It's still shitty. General lack of ethics and honesty is not some moral high ground that sits above mere classism and contempt for the poor and presumed powerless.

[gamblor956]

That is extremely unusual since besides generally require release forms from people in the pictures they run.

[Monroe13]

In the US at least, no release form is required of those pictured in a news article.

[gamblor956]

In the US at least, a release form is required of those pictured in a news article by name for articles published by the AP or any major city newspaper like the NYT, Chicago Tribune, WaPo, or LA Times...

[Monroe13]

Nope, even the big publications do not use or need release forms for photos in news reporting.

If you are in public and the photo is “newsworthy” your image can be printed in a newspaper without your consent.

“Use of someone's name or likeness for news reporting and other expressive purposes is not exploitative, so long as there is a reasonable relationship between the use of the plaintiff's identity and a matter of legitimate public interest.” - http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-anoth...

[kirsebaer]

When you read news from something that you personally have been involved in, you will notice journalists simplify and often get things a bit confused.

Like, when a journalist quotes you in print, it is often not a real direct quote, but rather the journalists interpretation of what you said (which can be way off). Always insist to "check quotes" or you could get a surprise when you read your interview.

[icelancer]

>> In contrast, other newspaper topics like politics, sports, business, etc. are often literal reporting of what people do

This comment should be preserved for all time and cited in the Gell-Mann Effect entry. Do you really think physics is infinitely more complicated than finance or politics?

[mattkrause]

I'm not sure about that specifically, but reporting on politics is much closer to the paper's core competency.

The paper runs articles on politics every single day. The characters and issues don't change too quickly: Quimby was the mayor last week; next week, he'll be the same mayor, dogged by the same scandals and trying to enact the same politics too. A lot of the facts are easy to check, if someone cared to do so. The reporters may have a background in political science or history, or something somewhat related.

In contrast, the science section is pretty small. Maybe it runs once a week and has one or two main reporters, who cover everything from Astronomy to Zoology. No one has a background in all of that, and many reporters don't have a technical background at all. You can try to fact check it, but the experts themselves don't always agree and it's hard to tell whether Dr. So-and-So is really an expert on the topic anyway.

And, despite all that, the science reporting I see does a pretty good job. One of my papers got a bit of media coverage, and pretty much everyone got the broad strokes right. One place made me sound a little too exuberant about the immediate ramifications; another made me sound a bit too negative, but neither was egregiously bad.

[umeshunni]

> reporting on politics is much closer to the paper's core competency.

And despite this, most of the media got the two of the most significant political happenings of the last 5 years (US elections and Brexit) completely wrong.

[verall]

Comments like this are great.

By saying "most of media gets it wrong" without any examples, everyone agrees, and noone needs to think about what the media said or what happened at all. Everyone reading can be right and everyone else can be wrong at the same time.

Less snarkily - what media narrative are you referencing specifically? What do you believe occured instead? There was much media covering many angles on both of these issues.

[mattkrause]

I agree that they incorrectly predicted future events, but no one should be able to that with absolute certainty. Past events are, of course, much easier to report accurately.

[untog]

What does "got wrong" mean in this context, though? People said the media got those things wrong because they said "90% chance Clinton wins" and Trump won. But that's why they said 90%, not 100%. It feels as though the concept of probabilities is either misunderstood or willfully ignored to score points.

[jchallis]

In the initial formulation of the Gell-Mann effect, Michael Crichton noted that the coverage of show business was equally simplified.

From discussions with my wife, who is board certified in infectious diseases, newspaper coverage of the following topics are simplified to the point of losing the main point: antimicrobial resistance, any tropical disease from malaria to Ebola, organ rejection.

I think the problem is universal not specific.

[karmakaze]

Any decent news report will of course have coverage of the literal facts, this will also be overshadowed by interpretation of the meaning of those facts. Any dry reporting which only present the facts without a hint as to how the reader should be reacting to those facts is unpopular and will be read by negligible few. It starts right from the headline that takes a view one way or the other. A number isn't presented without an adjective.

[twic]

If someone asked me what i thought the main problem with comments on Hacker News was, i would direct them to this comment.