Conference back40::soapbox

I just love it when someone pours gasoline on a fire.

My advisor (who has her own agenda) put me on to what sounds like an
interesting recent study:

Leavitt, F. J. (1997).  False attribution of suggestibility to explain
   recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse following extended amnesia.
   "Child Abuse and Neglect," 21(3), 265-272.

Apparently, this guy has taken an instrument developed by those who would
say all "recovered memories" are merely "false memories," attributed to the
therapeutic process suggesting abuse, and therefore implanting false
memories.  The instrument evidently rates how suggestible a person is,
which the False Memory people say measures how easily such false memories
can be implanted.  As with yesterday, Broca's area is failing me, and I'm
not being at all clear in what should be a simple explanation.

Anyway, taking the instrument developed by the False Memory people, this
other guy (who is apparently on the "recovered memory" side) measured the
suggestibility of a bunch of people claiming recovered memories (in
techno-babble, "recovered memory of childhood sexual abuse following
extended amnesia" - it's important to remember that when researchers say
"amnesia," they mean something fairly different from what Hollywood means
when they use the same term).  He then compared the scores to a set of
controls, presumably age matched, although I do not know this for sure.

According to the abstract, which I got to view for, oh, 60 seconds, the
results were that those with "recovered memories" were significantly less
suggestible (on average) than the controls.  This adds fuel to the
arguments of the Recovered Memories people, in that it somewhat refutes the
claims made by the False Memory people that these memories are the result
of suggestion.

A couple of caveats:
  1) I haven't been able to score a copy of this study yet, so I can't\
     comment on any of the flaws in the study (and I'm sure it, like every
     other study I've seen, has some serious flaws)
  2) There's more than one conclusion a person could draw from the results

What's so neat (to me) about this study is that it's going to start another
round of a really huge arguments.  I'm hoping we'll get at least a little
flaming here.