Gell-Mann amnesia effect

I explain the Gell-Mann effect a lot to media people when explaining how we mod r/science, you need to know the field to know what's total BS.

I think part of this effect is a focus on technicalities. For example, if you have direct personal knowledge on something like, say, a particular series and many models of laptops, you will likely be very familiar with all of the ins and outs on each particular model. I remember a month ago there was a post on /r/thinkpads where some guy was able to identify an obscure thinkpad based on really small details like the sizing of a particular logo and the like. A reporter who might have only researched this topic for a week or two (and with the demand for fast news today, maybe only a few days)) will be pretty prone to making this kind of error.

In older times before the internet, it wasn't really possible for a small subset of people with very specific knowledge to be able to spread that correction, so most people would have never noticed these minor errors. With the internet today though, it's extremely easy for people to find out and check even the smallest mistakes, and for knowledge of them to spread. This still happened before, we simply weren't aware of it. personally I don't think it's a particularly special or new effect, it's what will inevitably happen if you give a person 3 days to research something he might not know a thing about which will then be broadcast to millions of people on TV, some of whom are bound to be experts.