A few points: (1) I'm not sure why one would call the Thomson case the "mother of all false memories" because the only really significant thing about it was that his alibi was that he was on TV at the time of the rape and this was true.
(2) The Thomson case is not news and has been presented in a variety of sources in the past couple of decades, perhaps most popularly in Daniel Schacter's 2001 "The Seven Sins of Memory" (see page 92): http://books.google.com/books?id=m8qMjPF1NYAC&pg=PA92&dq=%22donald+thomson%22+rape&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0 or http://tinyurl.com/57o8n4 Schachter also refers to the Thomson case in his 1999 American Psychologist article "The seven sins of memory: Insights from psychology and cognitive neuroscience": |Source confusions can have important implications in everyday |life, as exemplified by cases of erroneous eyewitness identifications |in which a person seen in one context is mistakenly "transferred" |to another (D. F. Ross, Ceci, Dunning, & Toglia, 1994). A |particularly dramatic example involved the psychologist Donald |Thomson, a respected memory researcher who was accused |of rape on the basis of the victim's detailed recollection of the |rapist (Thomson, 1988). Fortunately for Thomson, he had an |airtight alibi: He was giving a live television interview (ironically, |concerning memory distortion) at the moment that the rape |occurred. The victim had been watching that interview just prior |to being raped. She had confused the source of her vivid memory |of Thomson, misattributing the television image to the rapist. |Thomson's alibi led to his immediate vindication, but others have |not been so fortunate. Recent investigations into cases of wrongful |imprisonment, where innocence was established by DNA evidence, |provide sobering evidence. In a sample of 40 such cases, 36 (90%) |involved false identification of the perpetrator by one or more |eyewitnesses (Wells et al., in press; this finding is also relevant to |the discussion of suggestibility in the next section). The reference for the Thomson 1988 paper is: Thomson, D. M. (1988). Context and false recognition. In G. M. Davies & D. M. Thompson (Eds.), Memory in context: Context in memory (pp. 285-304). Chichester, England: Wiley. Given that Thomson's story is at least 20 years old, why is this news? Elvis has also left the building (in many different senses); is that news too? (3) It is a common practice in the publishing of magazines and periodicals to have a cover date that is some time in the future. Given that these have been traditionally sold on newsstands, having a "future" cover date gives the publication some additional "shelf life". For a long period of time comic books would have a month on the front cover that was 2-3 months in the future which would give slow moving titles more time to sell (but this means that one has to subtract 2-3 months from the cover date to accurately date when a title hit the newsstands; an important point for comic book historians). -Mike Palij New York University [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:16:46 -0500, Stepehn Black wrote: > Michael Greenberg has a long and interesting review of a new book by Sue > Halpern called _Can't Remember What I Forgot: The Good News from the > Front Lines of Memory Research_. The review is quite positive about the > book. > > I especially liked this from the review: > > "Halpern recounts the case of an Australian forensics expert named Donald > Thomson who was a guest on a television show devoted to exploring the > unreliability of eyewitness testimony: > > Not long afterward [Thomson] was summoned to a police precinct, put > in a lineup, and identified by a woman as the man who had raped her. > Though he had an incontrovertible alibi-he was on national television at > the time of the attack and seen by hundreds of thousands of viewers-he > was charged with the crime on the basis of her unwavering eyewitness > testimony. It was only later, when an investigator discovered that the > woman's television had been on during the assault, that it became clear > that in the midst of her trauma, the woman had conflated Thomson's face > with that of the rapist." > > The review is in _the New York Review of Books_, 35, December 4 [that's > right], 2008 at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22110 > --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
