It just feels like this is a practical joke. It has to be made up by physicists to test my gullibility. 

You’re trying to make me believe that my consciousness/measurement/recording is supposed to impact particle physics? Like the little magical fingers of the special light of my soul reaches out to collapse probability into outcome somehow?

I will believe a lot, I am a fairly credulous person, but that is a bridge too fucking far

Some thoughts about the observer effect:

- doesn’t require human consciousness to interfere 
- just macroscopic interference leading to decoherence
- quantum states are in “superposition” a probability cloud of states
- something like a slit experiment makes them behave like they are in a classical state; hence the observer effect
- but it’s really because we don’t experience the world as a linear combination of multiple states aka superposition

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks

could the observer effect also be a measurement "error"? 

Error here meaning a lack of precision or knowledge or ability in how to measure what is happening, as the measurement can only happen within the dimensions and tools we have at our disposal. Hence, what is outside of this reality isn't measured, leading to an incomplete understanding of the cause. This incomplete understanding is then labeled observer effect.