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Michael Crichton, coiner of the term

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias describing the tendency of individuals to critically assess media reports in a domain they are knowledgeable about, yet continue to trust reporting in other areas despite recognizing similar potential inaccuracies.

The concept was coined by novelist Michael Crichton in a 2002 speech, naming it after Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist with whom he had discussed the phenomenon.

Physicist Murray Gell-Mann, for whom the effect was named

Crichton first described the “Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect” in an April 2002 speech about speculation to the International Leadership Forum:[1]

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. 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.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story—and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

— Michael Crichton, “Why Speculate?” (2002)[2]

He explained that he had chosen the name ironically, because he had once discussed the effect with physicist Murray Gell-Mann, “and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have”.[1][2]

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is similar to Erwin Knoll’s law of media accuracy, which states: “Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge.”[3]

Computer science professor Hal Berghel coined the term “Sokol’s paradox”, in reference to the Sokal affair, where he posits that it is likely to be more difficult to know what one doesn’t know than what one does. In a paper about the paradox, he described the Gell-Mann amnesia effect as a corollary.[4]

Psychological literature

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While not formally recognized in psychological literature as a clinically defined effect, the concept has gained traction in critical thinking and media literacy discussions.

The Gell-Mann amnesia effect relates to several known cognitive biases:

• Confirmation bias
• Selective attention
• Compartmentalization

1. ^ a b Kilov, Daniel (November 9, 2020). “The brittleness of expertise and why it matters”. Synthese. 199 (1–2): 3431–3455. doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02940-5 – via SpringerLink.
2. ^ a b Crichton, Michael (April 26, 2002). Why Speculate? (Speech). International Leadership Forum. La Jolla, California, US. Archived from the original on July 14, 2007. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
3. ^ Smith, William French (February 27, 1982). “Required Reading Smith on Lawyers”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved October 4, 2023.
4. ^ Berghel, Hal (March 2020). “The Sokol Hoax: A 25-Year Retrospective”. Computer. 53 (3): 67–72. Bibcode:2020Compr..53c..67B. doi:10.1109/MC.2020.2964894.