What the Gell-Man Amnesia Effect teaches us about the News and People

The Gell-Man Amnesia Effect is a term coined by Michael Crichton (Author of Jurassic Park). It is named after physicist Murray Gell-Mann.

In Mr. Crichton’s own words

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is 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 as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney 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.”

Take a moment to interpret Mr. Crichton’s words your own way and then you can read my interpretation and decide for yourself what to think.

Personally I interpret it as “take the news with several grains of salt, even the articles that you really believe or want to believe to be correct”. Understand that the news is written by humans. We are all imperfect with our own biases just like the people who write the news. In the late 1800s in the US, there was something called “yellow journalism” which was news that used sensational exaggerations to increase viewership. This was a result of competition between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Similar patterns occur in different countries at different times in history. Generally news sources that use extreme language often should be taken less seriously, because what is happening is that they are stretching the truth to capture eyes.

The same can be applied to individual people on a smaller scale as opposed to news corporations. Maybe you know someone who is very emotional and often over-exaggerates. When you go to verify what they said, you find that the numbers don’t add up. When you confront them about it, they often change the original numbers that they stated or deny that they were ever wrong in the first place. This is someone that you should be more wary of and maybe anticipate that the truth is most often much less than what they say.

After this whole article, I would say that you should keep the Gell-Man Amnesia Effect in mind when reading this article and this all the other articles in this blog. Perplexing isn’t it? The reason is that though I strive very hard to figure out truths in the world, I am human and will inevitably fall short. So do your own research and question what I write.