re: #110 ObserverArt

That was a travesty. There was that one day care run by the McMartin family out in California that was just a rush to judgement and they were ruined by all the allegations.

They were actually the first in a string, and much of it was built on leading interrogations of children, essentially browbeating preschoolers into agreeing with and eventually believing they’d seen all manner of things.

Mrs. BFBW is a big fan of ‘sciencey’ shows about perception and other brain-related stuff (you can tell I’m a scientist by how I talk!). One in particular was very revealing. It was about eyewitness testimony. They secretly set up an event with a few actors at some public place, filmed the whole thing surreptitiously, and then asked people to tell them what happened. They also had OTHER actors among the ‘witnesses’ who sneakily poisoned other witness’s memories. In the end, some witnessed remembered very clearly things that were demonstrably untrue.

Yes, memory is strange and not necessarily trustworthy.