How much can a memory prove?

Julia Shaw, a psychologist whose experiments led volunteers to remember committing crimes that never happened, explains how memories are rebuilt each time they are recalled and why confidence in a memory says little about its accuracy.

Elizabeth Loftus’s 1979 study sets out the experiments showing how viewing conditions, stress and the wording of later questions can alter what an eyewitness remembers. It remains a standard reference on eyewitness memory.

Elizabeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham examine the 1990s wave of cases in which adults recovered memories of childhood abuse in therapy, arguing that many such memories were produced by suggestion and describing the harm to families and the courts.

In 1984 Jennifer Thompson identified Ronald Cotton as the man who raped her, and DNA evidence freed him after more than ten years in prison. They tell the story together, from her certainty and his imprisonment to the friendship they later formed.

Lynn Nadel and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong collect chapters by psychologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and legal scholars on how memory is used as evidence in legal proceedings. It is a dense academic volume for readers who want the research in detail.