Elizabeth loftus quotes

Elizabeth loftus false memory

As we were going to press, Contributing Editor Jill Neimark sent this important note: I've been covering the subject of memory for this magazine since , when I profiled John Mack, M. You'd think that memory would be the stuff of dry academia but it turns out to be one of the most illuminating and terrifying stories of our time. Her work is dedicated to demonstrating the inherent malleability of memory, its distortions, its suggestibility.

She has testified on just that point as an expert witness in some infamous trials of the 80s and 90s. It turns out that's a dangerous line of work, for it flies in the face of the recovered memory movement, which has allied itself with feminism and child abuse. If anyone should be revered by feminists and therapists, it is Loftus, a brilliant woman who has put herself on the firing line with decades of ingenious and sound research.

But instead she is violently hated by some women and psychotherapists.

Elizabeth loftus experiment

Lately they've began trying to destroy her reputation, actually filing ethics complaints alleging scientific misconduct, threatening to sue an organization that is bringing her to speak, and using a few sentences from my article to try and censure her publicly. An astounding recent posting on the Internet gives a feel for the vitriol behind this.

It came from a self-proclaimed "insider" at the University of Maryland who claimed he had copies of 11 confidential letters within the American Psychological Association, alerted readers to two current ethics complaints against Loftus, and blasted a rallying call. This window of opportunity won't last forever. Let's go gang! Here's what happened: On January 16, Loftus resigned from the APA, noting that it had moved "disturbingly far from scientific thinking.

Its six psychologists had become so polarized--along exactly the same fault lines as the culture at large--that they produced two separate reports. By a most bizarre coincidence, two women at opposite ends of the country filed formal complaints against Loftus within weeks of each other, just before she resigned. Both had won civil suits after recovering long-buried memories of sexual abuse.