FALSE MEMORIES

Another important piece from the Spiked website on the dangers of so-called 'recovered memories'. Anybody who is familiar with the alien abduction scenario and the 'Satanic abuse' panics will recognise the dangers of bringing this sort of evidence into criminal cases. Spiked comments: "The unprecedented media frenzy over Savile, succeeded by wild accusations about VIP paedo-murder ‘rings’, should have flagged up to any intelligent person the obvious dangers of accepting tales of woe from long ago, uncritically. But this has not happened".

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In fact it now seems that people who have attempted to look critically at these issues are themselves coming under attack and being driven from their jobs.

Susan Clancy was a cognitive psychologist working at Harvard who was subjected to hate mail and a student boycott after publishing her research on false memories which demonstrated the dangers of taking them at face value. Her mentor at Harvard suggested that she move to the less politically troublesome field of recovered alien abduction memories.

The full article can be read here:
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/how-recovered-memories-fuelled-the-paedo-panic/16850#.VSVeMLRFB9A

Peter Rogerson's review of Susan Clancy's book is here:
http://mrobsr.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/believing-in-abductions.html