Elizabeth Loftus 'Creating False Memories'

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HOW PLACEBOS WORK • BURYING PLUTONIUM UNDER THE SEA • LEONARDO’S LEGACY FLYING OVER THE SOLAR SYSTEM THE ULYSSES SPACECRAFT GOES WHERE NO PROBE HAS GONE BEFORE JANUARY 1998 $4.95 Life’s architecture: cells grow with “tensegrity” Copyright 1997 Scientific American, Inc. January 1998 Vo l u m e 2 7 8 Numb e r 1 FROM THE EDITORS 6 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS 8 50, 100 AND 150 YEARS AGO 10 THE 1997 NOBEL PRIZES FOR SCIENCE A look at the contributions and controversies of the winning work. 14 NEWS AND ANALYSIS The Architecture of Life Donald E. Ingber 48 How groups of molecules assemble themselves into whole, living organisms is one of biology’s most fundamental and complex riddles. The answer may depend…show more content…
People need to be educated about the pain that can be caused by overzealous therapists. In June 1991 our then 30-yearold daughter began seeing a therapist for depression following her divorce. After seeing her for less than a month, this man analyzed her dreams and told her that the depression was from repressed memories of sexual abuse. Since then, she has broken all contact with us. Her siblings, however, do not believe the accusations. We have not only been falsely accused of a horrible crime, we have also lost a child. HELEN DAVIS Logansport, Ind. Loftus’s interesting article may leave readers with the impression that most allegations of abuse are inculcated by manipulative therapists. My daughter, who has Down syndrome, was molested for four years by her father, my exhusband. Although I had begun to suspect him from her sexualized behavior and from the fact that there were no other opportunities in her protected life for sexual abuse to occur, it was impossible for me to believe that her father would do such a thing until I heard my daughter explicitly describing one of his acts and crying softly to herself that she loved him, that it couldn’t be “that bad.” We are all capable of embellishing the truth and, in some cases, inventing it under the power of repeated suggestion. But to make any generalizations about the incidence of child abuse based on a few spectacular cases of…show more content…
The big financial-center banks that erivatives may have won a Nobel, but are they really a sell derivatives, moreover, may have an incentive to push a good idea? Companies have suffered huge losses trading product without clearly explaining the risks to a customer. in the type of derivative financial products whose invention was “You see a gap between the sophistication of Wall Street firms facilitated by the work of Fischer Black and the Nobelists. and the client firms,” notes Suresh M. Sundaresan of the Options and other derivatives—including futures, forwards Columbia University Graduate School of Business. “Because and swaps—are instruments for speculation as well as hedges bonuses on Wall Street are tied to transaction volume, this creagainst a drop in an asset’s value. They can be used to bet ates an obvious problem.” that the price of an asset will go up or down. Derivatives also One fear is that losses in the trading department of a large can have more of an effect on a portfolio than simply buying bank, say, could cause a meltdown of the financial system, a or selling a stock or bond because of the leverage involved. scenario that has sometimes prompted calls for stricter regulaLast November, for instance, an investor could buy nearly $1 tion. Critics of government meddling note that these dire million in futures contracts on the Standard & Poor’s 500 In- warnings have never

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