Talk:Elizabeth Loftus

Intro section

Hello SchreiberBike. I agree that "scientific" can be used instead of "academic" if that is your preference.

Loftus is much more widely known that a typical researcher in the psychology field, and this notability comes from her involvement in legal cases. Therefore I believe that the legal work should take precedence in the intro.

Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 06:21, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

No. That is just your individual impression, from your individual information sources. Everybody who is half-way well-informed about memory research, as well as everybody in the skeptic community, knew Loftus for decades before any of those legal cases started (if they are old enough). Those legal cases are all from the last three years! The article was first written in 2006. Please read WP:RECENT to correct your misunderstandings of Wikipedia policy. --Hob Gadling (talk) 09:13, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

@MrsSnoozyTurtle and Hob Gadling: Loftus's work has been important for many years in understanding how memory works and how fallible it it. Because court cases are so often base on memory, and because the stakes are so high in court cases, it's inevitable that her work would be applied in that field, but she is primarily a research psychologist doing scientific work in the study of memory. She has long been widely known in the field of psychology, but you are right that her involvement in court has made her more well known in general. I'm surprised by the list of people she has been involved in defending; they are some pretty reprehensible people, but even they deserve a defense. I wonder if that list is a fair reflection of the people she has worked with. SchreiberBike | ⌨  15:04, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Result of investigation

(Copied over from my comment on the user's talk page)

@Plantbug44: In your most recent edits, you selectively used only part of the cited source. Namely, you wrote:

Two of the three IRB committee members at the University of Washington recommended that Loftus be reprimanded, but a dean overturned that recommendation.

The source, however, says:

In the spring of 2001, the three-member investigating committee, consisting of two clinicians and one sociologist, concluded that Loftus was not guilty of the charge of "scholarly misconduct". But the two clinicians recommended to the dean, David Hodge, that she nonetheless be reprimanded and subjected to a program of remedial education on professional ethics. They instructed Loftus not to publish data obtained by methods they regarded as inconsistent with the "ethical principals" [sic] of psychologists-that is, the methods of a journalistic investigation.

On July 3, 2001, ... Dean Hodge wrote Loftus a letter of exoneration. Her work, he said, "does not constitute research involving human subjects." She did not commit ethical violations or deviate from accepted research practices. She was not guilty of misconduct. She would not have to undergo education on how to conduct research.[1]

I contend that what you added to the article does not represent a neutral summary of what the source says. Donald Albury 15:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Deleting my edits?

I added that in December 2022, on video, Loftus admitted to recovering her own repressed memories of child sexual abuse. It's been deleted twice. Why is wiki creating a false narrative? 2600:6C52:6E00:2B1:20FE:C5E2:9965:8DAB (talk) 21:49, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

You need to provide sources for this, preferably secondary sources to demonstrate that it is notable. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:53, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, if person A and person B disagree, it necessarily follows that person B "creates a false narrative". --Hob Gadling (talk) 22:40, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

RS

Why is rememberingdangerously.com a WP:RS? tgeorgescu (talk) 22:48, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Critiques need more depth

I agree this reads like a fluff piece, especially as there are some very disturbing issues around the over-application of her research.

[2]https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html 75.164.136.4 (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, false memories does not mean that people who remember being sexually abused are lying. It only applies to memories "recovered" through hypnotherapy or similar therapeutic approaches. So, yes, it has a very narrow meaning, and it does not apply to sex abuse in general.

The gist: if you have learned from therapy that you have been sexually abused, that therapist is a quack. Or, if you recover on your own "long forgotten memories", such memories are probably bogus. And, yup, there is a way to tell: people with recovered memories often tell fantastic accounts of how they have been sexually exploited by a Satanic cult which killed their babies and some of their members, stories which are completely out of touch with reality, e.g. expressing torture acts which are physically impossible. E.g. one Romanian woman claimed that her husband performed fellatio on her 5-years old child, and she made a penal complaint about her husband. I told her to ask a dentist if such thing is physically possible, since policemen will be merciless with her if they find out it is physically impossible. That was because the child told her her husband did that. So, yeah, read the stories of those with repressed memories of sexual abuse, and if they give five details which are absolutely impossible, you know it's all a fantasy. E.g. they claim they remember clearly one man raped them on New Year's Eve 1969. Problem? Then that man was already dead and buried. Or: that man spent all that day in prison for drunk driving.

Being sexually abused, except in early childhood when one does not form memories, is not something that one forgets (even if it does not lead to trauma). It's not like "where have I put my keys?" tgeorgescu (talk) 03:45, 4 June 2024 (UTC)