Gell-man's law and Kuran

Gell-man's Amnesia Effect goes:

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.

From Michael Chrichton.

Kuran argues:

One mechanism [for authoritarian regimes in the Islamic world] is kinship ties. Because organizations could not form, people relied on their blood ties. This was part of the reason that commercial transaction were and still are (relatively) personal rather than the impersonal model generally followed in developed states. 

From a mugwump (via Andreeson)

Alternatively, it could be exactly the opposite.