~> No one believes "wet streets cause rain."

If David Brock said it, you'd believe it.

But to help you and other clueless people, here are excerpts from a 2002
speech by Michael Critchton.  You won't understand, but try:

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Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have
all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
(I call it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann,
and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to
the effect, than it would otherwise have.)

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works 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 with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more
accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story 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. 

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