EVIDENCE, AUTHORITY AND THE GHOST OF NELLIE BLY

I thought of Nellie Bly (1864–1922) after reading an article on the benefits of listening to music in The Huffington Post (December 14, 2025). Having read Oliver Sacks’s Musicophilia, Lindsay Holmes has little new to add in “7 Undeniable Benefits of Listening to Music.” What struck me instead was a now-widespread mode of reporting, far removed from the methods of Bly, one of the first investigative journalists of modern times.

Holmes supports her claims with formulas such as “science shows…,” “research suggests…,” “a 2014 study found…,” and “according to experts…” "experts believe that..." Lacking confirmed sources or verifiable citations, the argument—benign though it may be—floats free of accountability. Holmes herself is hardly to blame. Her schooling shares the responsibility, as does The Huffington Post, for allowing such loose, quasi-scientific prose to pass as journalism. Nellie Bly, I suspect, would not have approved.