Newsweek and The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Author Michael Crichton coined the term “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect”. Crichton named it after his friend the Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Gell-Mann’s name was used to invoke the concept that we all may be experts in particular fields (his being physics).

The amnesia effect is that you read a story in a publication on a subject you know about and find numerous errors. You then turn to the next story (on a subject you know less about) and, forgetting your earlier experience, assume it is any more accurate.

Newsweek has just set a very low bar for the amnesia effect, in an article entitled “USS CARL VINSON ‘CANNOT SHOOT DOWN MISSILES’“.  The writer is a London-based “Asia reporter” with a CV that evidences zero experience to comment on the subject matter. This is the kind of low-grade “fake news” clickbait we would expect from an unknown publication run out of somebody’s basement.

For purposes of fair use critique of the original, I reprint in full below, with annotations, the wayback machine’s earliest archive of this article:

USS CARL VINSON ‘CANNOT SHOOT DOWN MISSILES’

BY ELEANOR ROSS

It weighs 97,000 tons and is equipped with tomahawk missiles, dozens of stealth jets and at least 5,000 heavily armed American soldiers but the USS Carl Vinson appears to have one fatal flaw as it motors toward the Korean Peninsula: It is not capable of shooting down missiles.

WTF? There are no stealth jets until F-35C enters service. No Tomahawks. No soldiers at all and those 5000 sailors are mostly unarmed. It is decently equipped to shoot down missiles fired at it (depending on status, the Nimitz-Class has Phalanx CWIS, Sea Sparrow, and/or Rolling Airframe Missiles).

The flagship in Donald Trump’s American armada is due to arrive in the waters of South Korea at the end of this week as a show of force to North Korea’s belligerent dictator Kim Jong Un, who has threatened “all out war” in the face of threats from Washington over its nuclear missile tests.

But while the USS Carl Vinson and the warships traveling alongside it pack some heavy firepower, it has emerged that they are unable to shoot down ballistic missiles, of which Pyongyang is believed to possess between 20 and 120, some of which capable of hitting targets as far away as Scotland, Alaska or Canada.

Wrong as discussed below.

To take down a missile, the carrier would need to possess an Aegis surveillance system, experts told Bloomberg News Wednesday. It’s not just the USS Carl Vinson that lacks that capability, but also South Korea and Japan’s largest battleships and the three other American warships , the destroyers USS Wayne E. Meyer and USS Michael Murphy, and the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain.

WTF? Nobody has battleships. The three US escorts and likely the JP and KR ships all have the AN/SPY-1, aka Aegis. In fact, Admiral Wayne E. Meyer is called the “father of Aegis“. The level of ballistic missile defense (BMD) capability of our Aegis ships depends on their level of software and hardware modernization. There is a chance that the foregoing paragraph was based on someone saying that the ships did not have the highest level of upgrades.

But the U.S. is playing the long game in the Korean Peninsula. On Wednesday the first first pieces of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system arrived in South Korea. It is not yet operational and has been controversial —there were protests when it arrived at the site this week —with China mounting a robust opposition to its installation.

It’s too much to expect this writer to discuss what “terminal” means or discuss that the ChiComs are really objecting to the radar which can see into China.

Speaking about the USS Carl Vinson’s capabilities (or lack thereof) when it comes to ballistic missiles, a Pentagon spokesperson told Bloomberg News. “We don’t discuss specific capabilities of weapons systems. No single capability defends against all threats. Rather it is the employment of integrated, multi-layered land and sea-based systems that provide missile defense.”

Snarky dismissal of an adult by an ignorant child.

It is likely that rather than providing a tool that can shoot down missiles heading toward Japan, the U.S., South Korea, Canada or anywhere else within range, the four ships will act as a heavily-armed deterrent. Should war break out, the United States has troops and weaponry nearby, as well as 15 of its own bases dotted around South Korea.

Is that bad? Does that justify the snarky title and intro?

North Korea threatened Wednesday that it had the capability to launch one nuclear missile every six weeks and pictures of Kim Jong Un posing with what the CIA calls ‘The Disco Ball’, the country’s first miniaturized nuclear warhead, were circulated on North Korea media. The ‘Disco Ball’ is small enough to fit inside a missile.

Presumably, North Korea would be wiped out after the first week/missile. Either “nuclear missile” is poor wording for “nuclear-capable missile with dummy warhead” or else the writer is particularly ignorant of propulsion.

Previously, despite having the technology to launch nuclear weapons, North Korea had not been able to fit the nuclear weapon into the missile. If North Korea launches another test, it will be its sixth in 11 years. The last three tests generated explosions that The New York Times describes as ‘Hiroshima sized.

Overuse of “launch”. One does not “launch” an underground test. Also, the correct preposition is “onto” instead of “into”.

This article was pathetic. It should establish your baseline level of trust for Newsweek if you do not succumb to the amnesia effect.

You are also encouraged to read the current version to see any corrections made. At least two have been made so far.