Professor Elizabeth Loftus discusses education, growing up, Do Justice and Let the Sky Fall, graduate school training, experimental and mathematical psychology, and a host of other topics. Here is part 2.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Subsequently, you took the role of expert witness in a number of important, controversial, and intriguing court cases. What are some of the court cases? Can you describe some of the more memorable moments with individuals involved in them?
Professor Elizabeth Loftus: Many of these cases involve people no one has ever heard of, of course, I have worked, and consulted, on some famous cases involving people like Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart, and Scooter Libby – a politician in the United States. I think some of the more memorable ones are people looked at accused of crimes convicted based on somebody’s memory when these people are either definitely innocent or probably innocent.
I think a memorable one was a man named Steve Titus, who was charged with rape based on the testimony of an eyewitness who somehow in the course of being interviewed went from not being particularly certain to being completely certain it was Steve. Steve Titus was convicted. Ultimately, he was able to get a journalist to show that another man committed these crimes. So Titus was freed, but he was very, very bitter. He had lost his job. He lost his fiancé. He lost his reputation. He lost his savings. He filed a lawsuit against the police and just as that case was about to go to trial, he woke up one morning and doubled over in pain and died of a stress related heart attack at 35. That is one of the saddest cases I have ever encountered.
If you want to write about one up in Canada, you might write about the teacher Michael Kliman, who, based on claims of repressed memory, had to go through three trials up in Vancouver before he was freed. I would bet my house the man is innocent.
Jacobsen: What is your most recent research?
Loftus: I started a line of work with Dan Bernstein and a couple of Graduate Students. We were looking at the repercussions of having a false memory. If I plant a false memory in your mind, does it have consequences? Does it affect your later thoughts, or intentions, or behaviours?
We started by trying to convince people they had gotten sick as children by eating certain foods. We succeeded in persuading people that they got sick eating hard-boiled eggs and dill pickles, and we did it with a fattening food, namely strawberry ice cream. Then, we showed that it could effect, not only what people thought they wanted to eat when they went to a party, but what they actually ate when you put food in front of them. Bernstein has gone on with some other collaborators to do further experiments on how it effects eating behavior. Most recently we have published a paper with collaborators showing these kind of suggestive manipulations work not just with food, but also can work with alcohol. We can plant false memories that you got sick drinking vodka and you don’t want to drink vodka as much.
That’s one line of continuing work.
For instance, in Asparagus: A Love Story, we described a study that showed that you could plant not only a getting sick memory that people then want to avoid. You could also plant a warm, fuzzy memory for a healthy food, and then people want to eat it more.
Jacobsen: If you had unlimited funding and unrestricted freedom, what research would you conduct?
Loftus: I am not sure if I want to conduct it, but with unlimited funding and no worry about ethics, ha! You could maybe do the kind of experiment to explore whether massive repression really occurs or it doesn’t. Where you could be able to expose people to prolonged brutalization, and really get a chance to study them thoroughly, but ethical concerns would prohibit that kind of study.
Jacobsen: Currently, you are on the executive council for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal – or CSI for short. What role do you play on the executive council? What is the core message of CSI?
Loftus: I am a fellow of the CSI. Periodically, I give talks at various conferences that the organization holds or I might write something for the Skeptical Inquirer. But I am so busy with so many organizations that I don’t play a large role in the executive council. I mean, other people may have been providing more input to what to bring to the conferences or activities that the organization might engage in, but I am on so many committees and boards that I am spread a little too thin to spend too much time at one.
It’s an organization of people that are pro-science, against pseudo-science and flimflam. Trying to expose efforts to manipulate people into believing or thinking things that might be dangerous, harmful, or untrue.
Jacobsen: Since you began studying psychology, what do you consider the controversial topics in Psychology? How do you examine the controversial topics in Psychology?
Loftus: That is a big question, and I do not get into all of them. I’ve got my own little area in memory and memory distortion. I know a lot about the science of memory and lay beliefs about memory. I sort of tend to focus my efforts there. There are many controversial areas that one could look at, but you are going to have to find a different expert to talk about some of the other ones. A related one to the one I care about is using facilitated communication with autistic kids. There is controversy about vaccinations. I don’t think it is particularly controversial. There is controversy about the human contribution to climate change. I don’t think there is much of a controversy. You can find a few people out of the mainstream.
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Original publication on www.in-sightjournal.com.
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Image Credit: Getty Images.