False Memory vs Constructive Memory: A case study of BW

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Subject BW is a 55 year old male with 12 years of education plus 18 college credits. For the past 34 years he has been employed in journalism. His case was brought to attention when his dramatic first-person story that he’s told and retold since 2003 of being in a helicopter near another helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq suddenly morphed into a different story where his helicopter was the one that was hit. In the aftermath of this change in story he was suspended from his job, with all signs that he will be fired. Previously, I showed that everyone's stories change over time, where details are changed, details are added and details are omitted (Kurczek, 2014). Everyone has heard of fishing tales where the fish gets bigger and bigger every telling, but not everyone tells their story over and over again on camera. I've since seen story after story after story about false memories and while I was impressed with the slate article (except for the blatant plugging of their book), I can't see why false memories keep being brought up.

Episodic memory, our memory for the events we experience in life is inexorably linked with episodic narrative, how we tell the stories of our memories. However, does the episodic narrative of an episodic memory constitute the entire memory? Stories are altered by the contexts that we are in including the people that we are telling our memory to (your friend versus your parent versus a research assistant) and the time (i.e. how much time you have to talk and how long its been since the experience). Is someone lying because their narrative of their memory changes in different contexts? This is not to say that contextual changes mean that instead of a helicopter in front of you getting hit be a RPG its all of a sudden your helicopter, but makes the point that our memories are inherently labile, constantly going through changes as they are disused or updated in subsequent re-experiencing. Few people's lives are documented as news anchors, politicians, and celebrities (the other cases highlighted in the slate article) so our own fibs, embellishments and misremembered events are brought to light and to shame at the same frequency. BW's downfall, as with previous politicians stems from our perceived belief that they be trustworthy, how can you trust anything someone says when one of their memories appears to be a lie? In the future we may be able to go to the tape, but for now we just have to understand that (almost) all of our memories are flawed and constructed from bits and pieces of what we perceived to be the experience and (un)motivated remembering and forgetting of the experience in the time since.

P.S. How does one become a quoted expert, do you have to write a book or something? Considering that my dissertation included a chapter on narrative and memory and how narratives change over time in healthy individuals and individuals with amnesia, I think I may have been of service in this case. I guess this blog will have to do for now

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Buffet Attitudes: Everyone's a special snowflake

The recent measles outbreak has highlighted the emerging trend of picking and choosing what you want to believe or what you trust. In teaching the scientific method, one of the first tenets that is taught is skepticism and questioning everything, but it looks like we've taken that a little too far. I first came to the thought of buffet attitudes through my experience with craft beer. In my view, the rise of craft beer (along with unique tastes in other aspects of life, like food, music, etc) is closely linked to our teachings to young children in the late 80s and early 90s, that everyone is special (thanks Barney and Southpark!). Politicians are somewhat dumbfounded by millennial behavior as their beliefs appear to be more liberal (particularly in social issues), yet are more likely to call themselves politically independent. Likewise, millennials are less likely to be religiously affiliated than previous generations (in some areas of religion this has previously been termed Cafeteria Christianity). Common across these trends is the "buffet attitudes" where younger adults are picking and choosing what they want and what they like rather than buying into beliefs or attitudes wholesale. In terms of cognitive biases, "buffet attitudes" may be called cherry picking, figuratively referring to selectively choosing points that affirm their beliefs and refute beliefs they don't hold while ignoring those that don't support their beliefs.

However, contrary to this trend toward special "snowflakness" is the pull towards wanting to be categorized in as part of a group. As Invisibilia recently discussed, when given a chance we'll often jump into one category or another and once in that category fiercely defend it (see the The Robbers Cave; Sherif, 1954; 1961 for some of my favorite social psychology experiments on group affiliation). A recent study in PLoS found that when your social identity (the group you feel you belong to) is threatened by scientific findings, you may come to devalue the findings. More broadly this speaks to a trend in science denialism (here and here).

This begs the question, how do we as scientists move to educate the general public on decisive issues? Putting out research in pay-walled journals doesn't seem to work and neither does trying to communicate that work through traditional public outlets such as radio, magazine or newspapers. Individual blogs, like this one, may have a readership that can be counted on one hand and all of these previously mentioned outlets assume that by simply putting information out there, the public will be able to parse it. We already know from the anti-vaccine movement that just putting research out there won't work (especially when one study that supports a particular position is completely fabricated). Science is built on multiple investigations from many different perspectives, theories and motivations and with the evidence summing to provide evidence that certain ideas are incorrect and other ideas are not incorrect as of yet. Because of the sea of publications each year,  it is almost impossible to wade through the evidence and form an informed conclusion about almost any issue, especially when the most accessible avenues for researching scientific issues does so through false equivalencies and "controversies." It seems like many of the problems with science communication stem from issues with how the methods of science is taught. Humans carry out science and humans are messy creatures with their own thoughts, beliefs, wishes, desires and needs. We present science as this noble and true venture that is without influence or problems instead of the complex and sometimes chaotic enterprise that it is.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of satire. In the tradition of A Prairie Home Companion, this ad, among others, will form the backbone of the underwriting and sponsorship of my podcast.