What I always enjoyed about Scully's character was her skeptical approach. She understood that the job of FBI agents is to build a case, to document, and be rigorous. She followed the evidence.
A bit late with this reply but my first interpretation of the Scully effect before reading the content was to think it referred to her habit of repeatedly disregarding inexplicable things with way too much skepticism despite eventually spending years with Mulder, across dozens of cases, where absolutely, completely fucking inexplicable things just kept happening.
I get being skeptical and always insisting on scientific rigor, evidence and documentation with each new case (especially if you're conducting legal investigations) but come on!.
After the Nth time in which Mulder posits a paranormal cause only for Scully to raise her eyebrow as if he were off his rocker, it's really her who becomes just a bit absurd... She just somehow has no adaptability for benefit of the doubt despite the many, many other times her partner was absolutely on the ball in suspecting the weird?
No changed perspective from, oh I don't know, multiple up-close encounters with things like 100-year-old liver-eating, hibernating elastic-man monsters, or human/marine parasite hybrids, or mind-controlling worms, space aliens, ghosts, demonic possession, sentient viruses, psychopathic telepathic killers, time travelers, inter-dimensional beings, witches even! and etc and etc and etc?
