Talk:False memory syndrome

message: The talk page was getting long, so threads dated prior to 2008 have been archived to /Archive 1.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 04:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: talk page archived

message: I have added these tags, because IMO, it appears that most of the article presents the point of view of the FMSF and affiliated orgs. My hope is that additional data can be added to the article to balance these views. Abuse truth (talk) 02:32, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur with the addition of the tags.  The article is currently far from unbiased.  It needs a major rewrite and solid references to bring it to  WP:NPOV.  It will take time but it can be done.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:00, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is terrifically POV, and rife with weasel words. It needs serious attention, ideally the attention of someone well-informed and reasonably impartial about false memory/recovered memory. Failing that, an editor who agrees with the work of Loftus et al. The numerous arguments to authority, which are invariably laden with weasel words ("other psychologists," "mainstream psychology," and "most psychologists"), are poor substitutes for factual discussions of this important and very controversial issue in psychology. To compound the problem, this article seems to subtly label psychologists who believe in FMS as child abuse apologists. --Kajerm (talk) 21:38, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  tags added on neutrality and balance 

message: This paragraph : 
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance has speculated that during the 1980s and 1990s, thousands or tens of thousands of therapists attempted to recover memories of early childhood abuse from their clients. The techniques, practices and exercises used in these attempts are often referred to as Recovered Memory Therapy and sometimes resulted in allegations of abuse being made by individuals against family members. Many of these individuals severed all connection with their parents, hundreds of whom were convicted of these crimes and imprisoned. Many of the people convicted on such charges have since been freed, in part due to the efforts of the FMSF and a wider, skeptical reappraisal of RMT and the veracity of individuals' recovered memories. Recovered memory therapy (RMT) on ReligiousTolerance.org
and the section in general appears to be poorly sourced. The above paragraph comes from a self-admittedly POV source, that uses very few references to back up the numbers stated in their article. Many of the statements they make do not appear to be backed up research. 
Quote from their webpage on RMT:
"Our normal policy is to explain both or all viewpoints that people hold on each issue. However, the extreme harm caused by RMT has now been well documented. The unreliability of RMT has been firmly established. Thus, this series of essays will mainly reflect the beliefs of a near-consensus of therapists in this series of essays: that RMT is a dangerous and irresponsible form of therapy."
Statements like "near-consensus" and "firmly established" appear to be statements of opinion not backed by data or research. I didn't want to delete the paragraph or section without a discussion first. Perhaps there is a way to save the section by bringing in reliable sources to bring in a more balanced perspective.Abuse truth (talk) 22:22, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added a paragraph to the history section in an attempt to balance the section with an RS peer reviewed journal article and abstract quote. This originally came from the wiki fmsf page. I have wikified it by using cite journal, adding the eric url and adding a balancing sentence at the end of the quote.Abuse truth (talk) 03:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  paragraph in the history section 

message: Yeah. So. False memory syndrome doesn't apply solely to memories of sexual abuse, it applies to...hmm, oh, I know - FALSE MEMORIES. Any sort of false memory can be included under FMS, but this article implies that the realm of FMS stops after sexual abuse.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.140.218.179 (talk) 17:29, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is not about "False Memories", it's about "False Memory Syndrome", and that term specifically as defined by the people who coined it applies specifically to memories of sexual abuse.  --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 18:47, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering the lengths that Loftus and other researchers have gone to in order to develop models of false memory formation in order to support the FMS hypothesis, FMS really should be briefly tied to the broader phenomenon of false memories. Failing to mention it at all just makes this article look even more like a blithe attempt to discredit FMS. --Kajerm (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Um...lack of range, maybe? 

message: I agree with the 4/1 restoration of the sentence in the opening section. "Not irrelevant, as it implies that he considers them biased."  ResearchEditor (talk) 01:37, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  agree with recent line restoration 

message: After a lot of deliberation, I removed the religioustolerance.org reference and statement, that has been  previously discussed several times already.
I read through their material to check the accuracy of the statement and I found that even if the source were reliable, the paragraph would need to be rewritten to correctly relate the information in the source.  But rewriting the paraphrase doesn't appear to be appropriate anyway since the reliability of the source has been questioned, and has not been established.  It's one person's interpretation of the topic; the author is not a researcher or otherwise recognized authority; and, he states his bias on the topic and is writing to prove his point - not to present the information in a neutral and balanced way.  If he were a notable commentator, it might be useful to present his personal views, but in addition to the other problems with the reference, as a self-published advertiser-supported website, again, the source fails WP:V and WP:RS.  -Jack-A-Roe (talk) 03:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  revisiting the religioustolerance.org reference and statement 

message: I have deleted this category because this page does not discuss "Crimes that have aspects involving Satanism or the occult." ResearchEditor (talk) 21:58, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Satanic ritual abuse and the "satanic panic" of the 1980s are intimately associated with the FMS debate. While I agree that it was a miscategorization, this historical context (and its use as evidence both in favor of and against the FMS hypothesis) should be explicitly mentioned. --Kajerm (talk) 21:47, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  deleted miscategorization 

message: I have restored an entire section that was deleted by an anonymous IP address w/o reason. The anon IP also deleted the phrase "so-called." I have added this back as "alleged" which more closely reflects the source and is more NPOV. I have deleted the one sentence history section which was unsourced. I added a line in the header about frequency rate from the Whitfield "Memory and Abuse" source that comes from a section on page 13 of his book, that he backs with four additional sources. I also combined several duplicate references. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  recent edits 

message: I have deleted an unrelated link and undid bold on a link to fix undue weight. I propose that the old tags on the top of the article be removed, since they haven't been discussed in a long time. ResearchEditor (talk) 04:06, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  recent revert and tags 

message: I've a copy of Hammond, D. Corydon; Brown, Daniel P.; Scheflin, Alan W. (1998). Memory, trauma treatment, and the law. New York: W.W. Norton. . for two weeks via the magic of Interlibrary Loan (wikipedia owes me $2 and that's not counting overdue fees). If anyone would like verification of how this source is represented on any of the pages, please let me know in the next two weeks. WLU (talk) 17:10, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have a copy of the entire book. Let's work out a version on the talk page that all can agree with. ResearchEditor (talk) 17:26, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hammond et al. 1998 

message: There are currently two potential versions for the theories section.  Here are both, before and after.  Some comments:
#My previous edit was to remove extensive quotations, per WP:QUOTE and WP:SS.  Quotes are generally deprecated unless necessary due to difficulty summarizing or controversy.  Quotes in footnotes are dumb, give undue weight in the footnote section, and particularly unnecessary in the Dallam article since it is the abstract that is quoted, which is readily available on-line.  Quotes should be used on an exception basis due to controversy requiring verbatim or difficulty summarizing, not because someone thinks they illustrate a point well. 
#Leadership council is used twice.  This is not "some researchers also think", this is "the same researchers have two opinions".  Particularly bad since "other researchers" leads both quotes and the second quote by leadership council is not led by a statement that requires the other side of the debate.  
#What is the feminista website?  My filters actually block it.  Is it a reliable source?  A journal?  An opinion piece?  Only 29 results show up on Google, and wikipedia is high on the list.  
#This is not a large article change, this is a summary of unneeded quotes by the same people or possibly unreliable sources.  
#A blanket revert removed several innocuous changes such as my use of a citation template.  I've corrected but please be aware in the future.  
#Ofshe should be on the page, but not in this section.  That's not a theory, that's a case report.  There's no theory attached, just that someone could have false memories implanted.  Put it somewhere else, not here.  WLU (talk) 18:30, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theories section 

message: Because I'm not familiar with the publisher, I've asked for an opinion on Dana Press, publisher of McHugh's book, here.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dana Press RSN question 

message: The page isn't perfect, but can we remove the tag at the top, or at least some of the issues?  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tags 

message: Searching in google books for false.memory.syndrome (I think the periods work like quotations that allow for dashes and other punctuation) between 2006 and 2009 turned up a couple sources:
* 
* 
* 
* 
*  - this one is pretty lengthy and skeptical/critical
* 
There's about 380 in total, but the number of hits per book seems to drop off after this.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:simple/complex 14:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent sources 

message: For a long time now this article has been misleading readers into thinking there is no scientific basis for the concept of false memories by focusing instead on the term "False Memory Syndrome". FMS is not an official diagnosis, but false memories are well accepted. The people who came up with the original wording involved included some dedicated POV pushers, at least one of whom has been permanently banned from Wikipedia for that activity. It's long past time the wording was changed to reflect reality instead of focusing on a what amounted to a dirty trick of rhetorics, so I fixed things. 
Some of the other pro-recovered memories bias is still present in the article, but at least the worst and most obvious example of POV pushing is taken care of. DreamGuy (talk) 18:25, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long standing bias in lead fixed 

message: Scolarpedia has a long list of sources on it's page: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/False_memory DreamGuy (talk) 18:26, 19 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  More sources 

message: This subject is currently being worked on in three different places. This is not working. If want to improve the quality we need to join our forces in one centralized article.
If you read the Recovered memory and Repressed memory articles you'll notice that there is a lot of other information there that could improve this article and visa versa, but it'd be a waste of time to copy and paste sources back and forth between articles that largely deal with the same subject.
Please respond on the topic of merging on the talk page of Repressed memory. JGM73 (talk) 00:34, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merging with Recovered Memory and Repressed Memory 

message: Articles with overlapping content and their respective sections:
Repressed memory
:History / Research / Hypothesis / Controversy / Legal issues / Recovered memory therapy (with referral to the main article)
Psychological repression
:Freud's theory / Later developments / Related concepts: repressed memories
Recovered memory
:Authenticity / Medico-legal issues / Neurological basis of memory / Amnesia / Effects of trauma on memory / Professional organisations
Recovered-memory therapy
:Terminology / Research / Professional guidelines / Legal issues
False memory syndrome
:Definition / Recovered memory therapy (with referral to the main article) / Evidence for / Court cases
=== Overlapping sections ===
Legal issues/Medico-legal issues/Court cases 
:→ False memory syndrome
:→ Recovered-memory therapy
:→ Repressed memory
Controversy/Authenticity (of recovered memories)/Research (about recovered memories)
:→ Repressed memory
:→ Recovered memory
:→ False memory syndrome
Evidence for (the existence of false memories in general)/Neurological basis of memory
:→ Recovered memory
:→ False memory syndrome
Hypothesis/Effects of trauma on memory
:→ Repressed memory
:→ Recovered memory
If you I missed a significant overlap, please create a new discussion topic to discuss this there.
=== Vote ===
* Vote for each of these topics which article should be their main article.
* Vote per topic whether the topics in the other articles should
:(a) have a brief summary and a referral to the main article, or
:(b) be referred to in the See Also section.
* And please vote yes or no to adding info-tags to the respective talk pages outlining the results of this vote. 
To keep things central, please cast your vote at Talk:Repressed memory#An oversight of the mess.
JGM73 (talk) 01:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  An oversight of the mess 

message: * Vote for each of these topics which article should be their main article.
* Vote per topic whether the topics in the other articles should
:(a) have a brief summary and a referral to the main article, or
:(b) be referred to in the See Also section.
* And please vote yes or no to adding info-tags to the respective talk pages outlining the results of this vote. 
To keep things central, please cast your vote at Talk:Repressed memory#An oversight of the mess.
JGM73 (talk) 01:08, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vote 

message: In the largest false memory study to date, 5,269 participants were asked about their memories for three true and one of ﬁve fabricated political events. Each fabricated event was accompanied by a photographic image purportedly depicting that event. Approximately half the participants falsely remembered that the false event happened, with 27% remembering that they saw the events happen on the news. Political orientation appeared to inﬂuence the formation of false memories...   — C M B J   11:48, 6 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 

message: This appears to be fringe, although hypnotherapy itself is characterized as pseudoscience.  Please also review recent edits at Jane Doe case.  I noticed this in relation to  (reverted by another editor).  Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 02:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: That revert was correct. Back then, that user tried to shift false memory articles in the fringe-POV direction. There is nothing fringe about false memories; to the contrary, the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, as well as other anti-pseudoscience organizations, have always taken the side of people like Elizabeth Loftus. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:28, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pseudoscience 

message: The style is bad, bordering on childish metaphors:
 How traumatic memories hide in the brainEdit
 Memories of traumatic experiences hide deep in the brain, causing psychiatric problems. ...
-》 let us remove all of these non-RS
 Zezen (talk) 09:07, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. Do you want to just remove the whole chapter or try to find a better wording? --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:44, 10 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non encyclopedic editorializing 

message: Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: https://neurosciencenews.com/unconscious-forgetting-5725/ http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/dallam/6.html. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)
For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, providing it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you.  retsacennS  (Talk) (Pain and Suffering) 03:57, 1 April 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright problem removed 

message: While the concept of false memories is broadly accepted, there is much less agreement that it is a disease or something like that. tgeorgescu (talk)  23:43, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit war 

message: Hi FMS talk page!
This page needs some significant cleanup. It has become a WP:COATRACK article. I am proposing some changes that I think will clear up confusion for a reader with no context on this issue.
Some general context (not to be added, just for anybody interested): False memory syndrome (FMS) was a proposed condition when, at the advent of the popularity of recovered memory therapy, psychologists were seeking to understand how and why multitudes of people were remembering erroneous events and not lying about remembering them. In the beginning, this WAS attributed to a syndrome, but this concept as a syndrome was dropped and the idea of false memories was more widely accepted as a general concept that happens to all of us, without it being a syndrome. This did not come without major contention and FMS was a stepping stone to understanding false memories. The proposed "syndrome" was in reference to the situation when an individual comes out of recovered memory therapy with new, false memories.
So, my immediate proposal for this page:
Change intro sentence in this way:
In psychology, false memory syndrome (FMS) iswas a proposed condition in which a person's identity and relationships are affected by what are believed to be false memories of psychological trauma, recollections which are strongly believed but factually contested by the accused
Remove this entire paragraph:
False memory syndrome is argued to be the result of recovered memory therapy, a highly contested term defined by the FMSF in the early 1990s which is not widely accepted among psychologists or psychiatrists, that groups together a wide range of commonplace therapeutic practices with fringe therapy methods, all of which FMS proponents argue are prone to creating confabulations.[citation needed] The most influential figure in the genesis of the theory is psychologist Elizabeth Loftus.
Recovered memory therapy (RMT) is not a contested term, it is a catch-all term to define any sort of therapy that has the intention to recover a memory in any sort of way. Arguing the semantics of RMT is a common method of proponents to loosely defend discredited practices. 
Remove this paragraph:
That such techniques have been used in the past is undeniable. However, both the appropriateness of some of the techniques and the extent to which they caused a supposed epidemic of false memories is highly contested.
It is unsourced and quite "mistakes were made"-y.
So, that said. Those are my immediate proposals for this page, which I do not believe are too contentious. 
Now for the nitty gritty... almost everything from here down is tangential. Here are my thoughts. In my opinion, most of the content is completely WP:OOS. The article is on False memory syndrome, a once proposed condition. If anything, it should explain the history of why this disorder was proposed, the criteria for the disorder (I have a source of its original proposed criteria). This section would be more suited to be anywhere here.
I have no idea why this is here. It has nothing to do with the once proposed diagnosis of false memory syndrome and reads like a bothsideism of arguing the legitimacy of false memory in sexual abuse cases. This is not appropriate for the article page.
Regarding this, I suggest integrating some of this somehow into the history of why the disorder was originally proposed. It provides context. Regarding this, I think the Gary Ramona part is a little long. It could probably be trimmed down to 3-5 sentences as a key legal case, if included at all. I think the last paragraph is fine, but could use more sources as it already mentions, which I would add.
If anybody has disagreements or thoughts, I am all ears! I certainly am not proposing that the above deletion suggestions means the info does not belong anywhere on Wikipedia, just that this article has become extremely cluttered with additional subject matter. ← LeftHandedLion 04:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  The difference between FMS and false memories