Consequences of the debunking: did the critique of recovered memory overshoot and shield real abusers?

Elizabeth Loftus, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The reliability of memory does not vary with the sympathy of the accused. A bad theory of memory harms genuine victims most, because it produces cases that collapse.¹²

Sources

1. Belief in an accurate memory is confirmed by default. But precise memory suddenly becomes crucial in the event of a crime or an accident. Small details assume enormous importance. Did the assailant have a mustache, or was he clean-shaven? Was he five eight or five eleven? Was the traffic light red, or was it green?

   Witness for the Defense, The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial, p. 22

2. On August 16 he was a burglary suspect; two weeks later he'd become a suspected kidnapper. Over the next few months, circumstantial evidence would make him a serial murder suspect. Life, it would be safe to say, had not proceeded according to plan for Ted Bundy. I thought for a while about the mass murder suspicions.

   Witness for the Defense, The Accused, the Eyewitness, and the Expert Who Puts Memory on Trial, p. 72

Where the argument is made

• Who Abused Jane Doe? parts I and II (Skeptical Inquirer, 2002)
• Dispatch from the (un)civil memory wars (Lancet, 2004)
• Bad theories can harm victims with Frenda (Science, 2010)

How the argument was received

Contested on the record rather than on the science; Cheit's is the most serious scholarly challenge.