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Elizabeth F. Loftus (born in Los Angeles, CA) is a psychologist who works on human memory and how it can be changed by facts, ideas, suggestions and other forms of post-event information. Her work is controversial, and has much direct application in law and other fields.

Education

Loftus received her bachelor's degree in mathematics and psychology from University of California, Los Angeles in 1966. She went on to receive her MA (1967) and Ph.D (1970) in psychology from Stanford University.

Career

One of her studies includes the reconstruction of automobile destruction study, which was an example of the misinformation effect. She is also developed the lost in the mall technique for creating false memories in the laboratory.

She is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society, and the Department of Cognitive Sciences, and a Fellow of The Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine. She is also an Affiliate Professor of Psychology and Affiliate Professor of Law at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Loftus has acted as a consultant or expert witness on over 200 court cases on the subject of memory. Some have been critical of her testimony and scholarship.

Loftus is a member of the Advisory Board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Jane Doe Case

"Jane Doe" was the subject of a case study published in 1997 by Dr. David Corwin on issues of repressed and recovered memory. Neither the study nor later follow-up studies and articles referred to her by her real name. As a psychiatrist retained in a divorce case, Corwin had videotaped an interview with Jane Doe - then six years old - in which she claimed to have suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her biological mother. Eleven years later, Corwin showed Jane Doe with the original tape after obtaining approval from her and her guardian. Corwin then videotaped a follow-on interview in which Jane Doe appeared to spontaneously recall another abusive event abuse she had suffered despite having had no conscious memory of abuse in the years since the initial interview. Corwin published a transcript of the tape and an explanatory article. With Doe's permission, Corwin also played portions of both videotapes to numerous professional audiences.

Loftus hired a private investigator in California and together with co-researcher Melvin Guyer undertook a subsequent investigation into the case, reviewed extensive court records and interviewed Jane's mother and foster mother. In 2002, based on the information obtained, Loftus and Guyer published an article entitled “Who Abused Jane Doe? The Hazards of the Single Case History” in the Skeptical Inquirer. The article was highly critical of the scientific validity of Corwin's 1997 article, and questioned the factual accuracy of his account.

On February 23, 2003, "Jane Doe", using her real name of Nicole Taus, sued Loftus, the University of Washington and others alleging invasion of privacy and other torts. Most of the counts against Loftus were dismissed by the trial court or reviewing courts as a "SLAPP" suit, intended to punish the defendants for academic activity protected by the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. In February, 2007, the California Supreme Court ordered dismissal of all but one count, allowing Taus to proceed on her claim that Loftus misrepresented herself as Corwin's supervisor in interviewing Taus's foster mother.

Testimony in Scooter Libby trial

On October 26, 2006, Dr. Loftus was called as the first defense witness in a pretrial hearing in the federal perjury case against Lewis Libby. The Washington Post reported that under "withering" cross-examination by prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Loftus struggled to defend the scientific basis of her methodology amid apparent contradictions between her testimony and her work, and internal contradictions within her work. According to the Post, Loftus also "insisted that she had never met Fitzgerald" previously; however, Fitzgerald reminded her that he had cross-examined her before in another case in which she had been an expert defense witness. Page 21 of the transcript from the hearing indicates that Loftus said "I don't remember meeting you before" then "I just can't get the memory back. When Fitzpatrick provided details of the case, she said on p. 21, "I vague--well, I remember the defense attorney . . . " (US v. Libby, CR. NO. 05-394 RBW).

Other appearances

Loftus attended and was a speaker at the Beyond Belief symposium on November 2006.

Honors

In 2004 Loftus was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2005, she won the Grawemeyer Prize in Psychology (to honor ideas of “great significance and impact”). Also in 2005 she was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2006, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

Loftus has also received five honorary doctorates for her research, the first in 1982 from Miami University (Ohio), the second in 1990 from Leiden University in the Netherlands, and the third in 1994 from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York - an honorary doctorate of laws. Her 4th honorary doctorate, from the University of Portsmouth in England, was awarded in l998; the 5th, from the University of Haifa is Israel, was awarded in 2005.

She is past president of the Association for Psychological Science, the Western Psychological Association, and the American Psychology-Law Society.

Perhaps one of the most unusual signs of recognition of the impact of Loftus’s research came in a study published by the Review of General Psychology. The study identified the 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century, and not surprisingly Freud, Skinner, and Piaget are at the top of that list. Loftus was #58, and the top ranked woman on the list.

Books

• Eyewitness Testimony (1979) ISBN 0-674-28777-0
• Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the Eyewitness and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial (1991) ISBN 0-312-08455-2
• The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse (1994) ISBN 0-312-14123-8

References

1. War & remembrance: Controversy is a constant for memory researcher Elizabeth Loftus, newly installed at UCI November 3, 2002
2. Recovered Memories January 16, 2006
3. UC Irvine faculty page
4. Her home page at the University of Washington
5. Award for Distinguished Scientific Psychology November 2003
6. "Remembering Dangerously" & Hoult v. Hoult: The Myth of Repressed Memory that Elizabeth Loftus Created by Jennifer Hoult
7. Jim Hopper's assessment of Elizabeth Loftus' work on repressed memory
8. Taus v. Loftus (2007) 40 Cal.4th 683, 54 Cal.Rptr.3d 775.
9. S.C. to Decide Whether Abuse-Study Subject May Sue Professor Re: Nicole Taus, David Corwin, 2005
10. Taus: Amicus Curia by Richard McNally 2005
11. Taus: Amicus Curia by Michael J. Snedeker May 26, 2005

• American psychologists
• Cognitive scientists
• Living people
• University of California, Irvine faculty
• University of California, Los Angeles alumni
• Stanford University alumni
• Forensic psychology