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I'd like to tell you about a legal case that I worked on

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involving a man named Steve Titus.

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Titus was a restaurant manager.

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He was 31 years old, he lived in Seattle, Washington,

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he was engaged to Gretchen,

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about to be married, she was the love of his life.

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And one night, the couple went out

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for a romantic restaurant meal.

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They were on their way home,

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and they were pulled over by a police officer.

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You see, Titus' car sort of resembled

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a car that was driven earlier in the evening

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by a man who raped a female hitchhiker,

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and Titus kind of resembled that rapist.

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So the police took a picture of Titus,

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they put it in a photo lineup,

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they later showed it to the victim,

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and she pointed to Titus' photo.

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She said, "That one's the closest."

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The police and the prosecution proceeded with a trial,

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and when Steve Titus was put on trial for rape,

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the rape victim got on the stand

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and said, "I'm absolutely positive that's the man."

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And Titus was convicted.

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He proclaimed his innocence,

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his family screamed at the jury,

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his fiancée collapsed on the floor sobbing,

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and Titus is taken away to jail.

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So what would you do at this point?

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What would you do?

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Well, Titus lost complete faith in the legal system,

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and yet he got an idea.

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He called up the local newspaper,

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he got the interest of an investigative journalist,

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and that journalist actually found the real rapist,

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a man who ultimately confessed to this rape,

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a man who was thought to have committed 50 rapes

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in that area,

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and when this information was given to the judge,

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the judge set Titus free.

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And really, that's where this case should have ended.

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It should have been over.

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Titus should have thought of this as a horrible year,

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a year of accusation and trial, but over.

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It didn't end that way.

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Titus was so bitter.

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He'd lost his job. He couldn't get it back.

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He lost his fiancée.

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She couldn't put up with his persistent anger.

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He lost his entire savings,

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and so he decided to file a lawsuit

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against the police and others whom he felt

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were responsible for his suffering.

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And that's when I really started working on this case,

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trying to figure out

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how did that victim go from

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"That one's the closest"

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to "I'm absolutely positive that's the guy."

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Well, Titus was consumed with his civil case.

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He spent every waking moment thinking about it,

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and just days before he was to have his day in court,

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he woke up in the morning,

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doubled over in pain,

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and died of a stress-related heart attack.

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He was 35 years old.

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So I was asked to work on Titus' case

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because I'm a psychological scientist.

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I study memory. I've studied memory for decades.

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And if I meet somebody on an airplane --

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this happened on the way over to Scotland --

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if I meet somebody on an airplane,

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and we ask each other, "What do you do? What do you do?"

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and I say "I study memory,"

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they usually want to tell me how they have trouble remembering names,

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or they've got a relative who's got Alzheimer's

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or some kind of memory problem,

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but I have to tell them

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I don't study when people forget.

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I study the opposite: when they remember,

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when they remember things that didn't happen

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or remember things that were different

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from the way they really were.

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I study false memories.

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Unhappily, Steve Titus is not the only person

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to be convicted based on somebody's false memory.

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In one project in the United States,

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information has been gathered

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on 300 innocent people,

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300 defendants who were convicted of crimes they didn't do.

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They spent 10, 20, 30 years in prison for these crimes,

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and now DNA testing has proven

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that they are actually innocent.

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And when those cases have been analyzed,

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three quarters of them

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are due to faulty memory, faulty eyewitness memory.

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Well, why?

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Like the jurors who convicted those innocent people

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and the jurors who convicted Titus,

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many people believe that memory

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works like a recording device.

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You just record the information,

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then you call it up and play it back

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when you want to answer questions or identify images.

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But decades of work in psychology

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has shown that this just isn't true.

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Our memories are constructive.

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They're reconstructive.

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Memory works a little bit more like a Wikipedia page:

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You can go in there and change it, but so can other people.

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I first started studying this constructive memory process

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in the 1970s.

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I did my experiments that involved showing people

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simulated crimes and accidents

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and asking them questions about what they remember.

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In one study, we showed people a simulated accident

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and we asked people,

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how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?

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And we asked other people,

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how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?

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And if we asked the leading "smashed" question,

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the witnesses told us the cars were going faster,

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and moreover, that leading "smashed" question

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caused people to be more likely to tell us

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that they saw broken glass in the accident scene

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when there wasn't any broken glass at all.

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In another study, we showed a simulated accident

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where a car went through an intersection with a stop sign,

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and if we asked a question that insinuated it was a yield sign,

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many witnesses told us they remember seeing a yield sign

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at the intersection, not a stop sign.

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And you might be thinking, well, you know,

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these are filmed events,

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they are not particularly stressful.

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Would the same kind of mistakes be made

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with a really stressful event?

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In a study we published just a few months ago,

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we have an answer to this question,

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because what was unusual about this study

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is we arranged for people to have a very stressful experience.

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The subjects in this study

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were members of the U.S. military

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who were undergoing a harrowing training exercise

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to teach them what it's going to be like for them

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if they are ever captured as prisoners of war.

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And as part of this training exercise,

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these soldiers are interrogated in an aggressive,

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hostile, physically abusive fashion for 30 minutes

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and later on they have to try to identify

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the person who conducted that interrogation.

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And when we feed them suggestive information

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that insinuates it's a different person,

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many of them misidentify their interrogator,

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often identifying someone who doesn't even remotely

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resemble the real interrogator.

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And so what these studies are showing

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is that when you feed people misinformation

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about some experience that they may have had,

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you can distort or contaminate or change their memory.

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Well out there in the real world,

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misinformation is everywhere.

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We get misinformation

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not only if we're questioned in a leading way,

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but if we talk to other witnesses

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who might consciously or inadvertently feed us

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some erroneous information,

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or if we see media coverage about some event we might have experienced,

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all of these provide the opportunity

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for this kind of contamination of our memory.

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In the 1990s, we began to see

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an even more extreme kind of memory problem.

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Some patients were going into therapy with one problem --

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maybe they had depression, an eating disorder --

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and they were coming out of therapy

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with a different problem.

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Extreme memories for horrific brutalizations,

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sometimes in satanic rituals,

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sometimes involving really bizarre and unusual elements.

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One woman came out of psychotherapy

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believing that she'd endured years

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of ritualistic abuse, where she was forced into a pregnancy

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and that the baby was cut from her belly.

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But there were no physical scars

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or any kind of physical evidence

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that could have supported her story.

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And when I began looking into these cases,

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I was wondering,

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where do these bizarre memories come from?

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And what I found is that most of these situations

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involved some particular form of psychotherapy.

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And so I asked,

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were some of the things going on in this psychotherapy --

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like the imagination exercises

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or dream interpretation,

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or in some cases hypnosis,

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or in some cases exposure to false information --

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were these leading these patients

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to develop these very bizarre,

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unlikely memories?

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And I designed some experiments

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to try to study the processes that were being used

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in this psychotherapy so I could study

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the development of these very rich false memories.

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In one of the first studies we did,

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we used suggestion,

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a method inspired by the psychotherapy we saw in these cases,

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we used this kind of suggestion

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and planted a false memory

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that when you were a kid, five or six years old,

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you were lost in a shopping mall.

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You were frightened. You were crying.

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You were ultimately rescued by an elderly person

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and reunited with the family.

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And we succeeded in planting this memory

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in the minds of about a quarter of our subjects.

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And you might be thinking, well,

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that's not particularly stressful.

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But we and other investigators have planted

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rich false memories of things that were

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much more unusual and much more stressful.

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So in a study done in Tennessee,

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researchers planted the false memory

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that when you were a kid, you nearly drowned

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and had to be rescued by a life guard.

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And in a study done in Canada,

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researchers planted the false memory

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that when you were a kid,

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something as awful as being attacked by a vicious animal

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happened to you,

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succeeding with about half of their subjects.

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And in a study done in Italy,

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researchers planted the false memory,

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when you were a kid, you witnessed demonic possession.

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I do want to add that it might seem

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like we are traumatizing these experimental subjects

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in the name of science,

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but our studies have gone through thorough evaluation

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by research ethics boards

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that have made the decision

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that the temporary discomfort that some

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of these subjects might experience in these studies

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is outweighed by the importance of this problem

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for understanding memory processes

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and the abuse of memory that is going on

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in some places in the world.

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Well, to my surprise,

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when I published this work and began to speak out

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against this particular brand of psychotherapy,

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it created some pretty bad problems for me:

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hostilities, primarily from the repressed memory therapists,

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who felt under attack,

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and by the patients whom they had influenced.

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I had sometimes armed guards at speeches

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that I was invited to give,

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people trying to drum up letter-writing campaigns to get me fired.

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But probably the worst

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was I suspected that a woman

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was innocent of abuse

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that was being claimed by her grown daughter.

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She accused her mother of sexual abuse

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based on a repressed memory.

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And this accusing daughter had actually allowed her story

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to be filmed and presented in public places.

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I was suspicious of this story,

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and so I started to investigate,

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and eventually found information that convinced me

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that this mother was innocent.

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I published an exposé on the case,

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and a little while later, the accusing daughter

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filed a lawsuit.

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Even though I'd never mentioned her name,

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she sued me for defamation and invasion of privacy.

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And I went through nearly five years

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of dealing with this messy, unpleasant litigation,

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but finally, finally, it was over and I could really

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get back to my work.

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In the process, however, I became part

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of a disturbing trend in America

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where scientists are being sued

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for simply speaking out on matters of great public controversy.

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When I got back to my work, I asked this question:

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if I plant a false memory in your mind,

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does it have repercussions?

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Does it affect your later thoughts,

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your later behaviors?

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Our first study planted a false memory

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that you got sick as a child eating certain foods:

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hard-boiled eggs, dill pickles, strawberry ice cream.

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And we found that once we planted this false memory,

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people didn't want to eat the foods as much

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at an outdoor picnic.

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The false memories aren't necessarily bad or unpleasant.

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If we planted a warm, fuzzy memory

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involving a healthy food like asparagus,

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we could get people to want to eat asparagus more.

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And so what these studies are showing

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is that you can plant false memories

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and they have repercussions

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that affect behavior long after the memories take hold.

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Well, along with this ability

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to plant memories and control behavior

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obviously come some important ethical issues,

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like, when should we use this mind technology?

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And should we ever ban its use?

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Therapists can't ethically plant false memories

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in the mind of their patients

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even if it would help the patient,

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but there's nothing to stop a parent

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from trying this out on their overweight or obese teenager.

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And when I suggested this publicly,

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it created an outcry again.

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"There she goes. She's advocating that parents lie to their children."

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Hello, Santa Claus. (Laughter)

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I mean, another way to think about this is,

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which would you rather have,

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a kid with obesity, diabetes, shortened lifespan,

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all the things that go with it,

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or a kid with one little extra bit of false memory?

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I know what I would choose for a kid of mine.

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But maybe my work has made me different from most people.

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Most people cherish their memories,

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know that they represent their identity,

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who they are, where they came from.

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And I appreciate that. I feel that way too.

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But I know from my work

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how much fiction is already in there.

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If I've learned anything from these decades

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of working on these problems, it's this:

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just because somebody tells you something

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and they say it with confidence,

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just because they say it with lots of detail,

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just because they express emotion when they say it,

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it doesn't mean that it really happened.

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We can't reliably distinguish true memories from false memories.

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We need independent corroboration.

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Such a discovery has made me more tolerant

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of the everyday memory mistakes

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that my friends and family members make.

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Such a discovery might have saved Steve Titus,

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the man whose whole future was snatched away

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by a false memory.

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But meanwhile, we should all keep in mind,

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we'd do well to,

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that memory, like liberty,

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is a fragile thing.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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Thank you. (Applause)

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Thanks very much. (Applause)