Elizabeth Loftus for the Maxwell defense
Elizabeth Fishman grew up in a Jewish family in Bel Air, California.[10][11] Her parents were Sidney and Rebecca Fishman; her father was a doctor and her mother a librarian.[11] When Loftus was 14 years old, her mother drowned.[8][11]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus
Yesterday’s main testimony was provided by Elizabeth Loftus, a frequent witness for defense lawyers over the decades. Loftus was examined by Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim. Loftus’ testimony began with a long and meandering presentation of her resume and qualifications. At one point, Sternheim asked Loftus just how long her CV was.
“Well the CV is 47 pages,” Loftus said, to a burst of laughter from the overflow room where the press and the public watched the trial.
Loftus also listed a long series of professorships, titles, and professional affiliations, from the University of Washington at Seattle, where she taught for 29 years, to her current perch at UC Irvine, where she’s been since 2002.
While she rattled off her list of publications and honors, a woman in the overflow room with a high ponytail and a white mask sat with her feet up against the bench in front of her, resting a black book on her knees and reading.
Loftus also described how she’d consulted with a series of government agencies including the Department of Justice, the Secret Service, the CIA, the FBI, and the IRS.
Despite this long list of accomplishments and associations, Loftus’ testimony was underwhelming. During cross examination by Assistant US Attorney Lara Pomerantz, Pomerantz poked holes in Loftus’ publications and painted her motivation for being involved in around 300 criminal defense cases as financial.
“You’ve made a career being a witness for the defense,” Pomerantz said. In fact, Pomerantz went on, Loftus had even written a book called ‘Witness for the Defense.’ Loftus acknowledged having done so.
“You haven’t written a book called Impartial Witness” though, said Pomerantz.
“I haven’t written a book by that title,” Loftus replied tersely.
Pomerantz also pointed out that Loftus was charging $600/hr for her testimony, and asked if she hadn’t made millions of dollars as a witness for the defense over the years.
“I don’t know if it’s millions,” Loftus answered defensively.
During Loftus’ examination by the defense as an expert witness, she drew a diagram that outlined her theory of how memory functions.
First, she said, there was the moment of acquisition, when some event or events occurred. Then, there is a retention period, which can go on for years. It’s during this time, Loftus claims, that memories can become contaminated or distorted. One way that can happen, she testified, was through the motivated questioning of a psychologist determined to explain a patient’s current day problems by the presence of a repressed memory buried during their childhood.
Elizabeth Loftus’ Stages of Memory Diagram // MarlonEttinger
“Sometimes when people are trying to provide information they feel pressure to provide more information,” Loftus added.
She also cited an idea known as ‘labeling.’
She explained a “classic study” where subjects are shown a grainy distorted black image that could look like a pair of eyeglasses. When the image was labeled “eyeglasses” people were more likely to see a pair of eyeglasses in the image. But when they were labeled “dumbbell,” subjects were more likely to see a pair of dumbbells.
Loftus went on to describe something called the “forgetting curve,” which she said was crucial to take to mind when considering the third stage of memory: retention. She referenced the common sense concept of memory “fading” over time, and drew an x and y axis to show that, in her theory of memory, memory becomes less and less precise as the time from the initial event of acquisition grows further away.
Loftus also described “rich false memories,” explaining how researchers like herself had sought to plant entire events - that had never happened at all - into people’s minds. She cited successful examples from her own studies, like convincing subjects that they’d been drowned as a child and had to be rescued by a lifeguard, or that they’d committed a crime when they were younger that was so serious that the police had to get involved.
“False memories,” Loftus said, “can be expressed with a high degree of confidence.”
Loftus became defensive when Pomerantz pointed out some of the limitations of her studies. In one, they had asked subjects to recall whether or not they’d met Bugs Bunny at a Disneyland resort. The conceit of the study was that, because Bugs Bunny was a Warner Brothers character, this would be impossible to have ever actually happened. The fact that subjects still claimed to have remembered this was more proof to Loftus of the malleability of memory. Pomerantz pointed out in this study that just 16% of subjects claimed to have shook Bugs Bunny’s hand.
Pomerantz also pointed out that, though in some of Loftus’ studies suggestion could make observers misremember details of the incident, like saying they saw a yield sign during a car crash instead of a stop sign, the main event was still remembered.
And she pointed out that none of the subjects in any of Loftus’ studies faced the possibility of criminal charges if they lied to her. Loftus acknowledged that they didn’t.
Not all memory is retained equally then? asked Pomerantz.
“Correct.”
Finally, asked Pomerantz, you’ve never done a study where you attempt to introduce a false memory of child sexual abuse?
“We haven’t,” Loftus answered.
She's also given talks at TEDx-CIA and "Booz, Allen/CIA.
Professional history/CV of Elizabeth Loftus, pdf file can be downloaded: https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-ti ... ftusCV.pdf