She really is all about herself. MOO
The work of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who has spent decades exposing flaws in eyewitness testimony, is gaining fresh traction in the U.S. legal system
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Towards the end of 1995, two women filed formal complaints against Loftus with the APA. Lynn Crooks and Jennifer Hoult had won civil suits in cases involving recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, and both claimed that Loftus had distorted the facts of their cases in articles and interviews. Loftus resigned from the APA and critics speculated that she had caught wind of the complaints and left before a formal investigation could take place. But Loftus chalks her resignation up to political disagreements, saying she knew nothing of the complaints at the time.
In 1997, Loftus and several colleagues began to dig into a published case study describing an anonymous subject, 'Jane Doe', who had apparently recovered a
repressed memory of childhood abuse. They found information that cast doubt on her account, but before they could publish, Doe contacted the University of Washington in Seattle, where Loftus was working, and accused the team of breaching her privacy.
The university confiscated Loftus's files, put her under investigation for nearly two years and prevented her from publishing. She was eventually cleared, and published the work in 2002. The next year, however, Doe sued Loftus and her collaborators for fraud, invasion of privacy, defamation and causing emotional distress.
It was at around that time that Loftus moved to the University of California, Irvine. The Jane Doe case was eventually settled in 2007, when the Supreme Court of California dismissed all but one of the charges and Loftus agreed to pay a nuisance settlement of $7,500. “It was such a stressful time, but
I can't really say it was detrimental overall,” says Loftus.