These may be posted on another thread, but there are some pretty good ones.
![]()
Just his Iraq helicopter fib.
For most of this century, experimental psychologists have been interested in how and why memory fails. As Greene2 has aptly noted, memories do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they continually disrupt each other, through a mechanism that we call "interference." Literally thousands of studies have documented how our memories can be disrupted by things that we experienced earlier (proactive interference) or things that we experienced later (retroactive interference).
Relatively modern research on interference theory has focused primarily on retroactive interference effects. After receipt of new information that is misleading in some way, people make errors when they report what they saw3. The new, post-event information often becomes incorporated into the recollection, supplementing or altering it, sometimes in dramatic ways. New information invades us, like a Trojan horse, precisely because we do not detect its influence. Understanding how we become tricked by revised data about a witnessed event is a central goal of this research.
The paradigm for this research is simple. Participants first witness a complex event, such as a simulated violent crime or an automobile accident. Subsequently, half the participants receive new misleading information about the event. The other half do not get any misinformation. Finally, all participants attempt to recall the original event. In a typical example of a study using this paradigm, participants saw a video depicting a killing in a crowded town square. They then received written information about the killing, but some people were misled about what they saw. A critical blue vehicle, for instance, was referred to as being white. When later asked about their memory for the color of the vehicle, those given the phony information tended to adopt it as their memory; they said they saw white4. In these and many other experiments, people who had not received the phony information had much more accurate memories. In some experiments the deficits in memory performance following receipt of misinformation have been dramatic, with performance differences as large as 30 or 40%.
This degree of distorted reporting has been found in scores of studies, involving a wide variety of materials. People have recalled nonexistent broken glass and tape recorders, a clean-shaven man as having a mustache, straight hair as curly, stop signs as yield signs, hammers as screwdrivers, and even something as large and conspicuous as a barn in a bucolic scene that contained no buildings at all. In short, misleading post-event information can alter a person's recollection in a powerful ways, even leading to the creation of false memories of objects that never in fact existed.
You were abducted by aliens, you saw Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, and then you went up in a balloon. Didn't you?
Alan Alda had nothing against hard-boiled eggs until last spring. Then the actor, better known as Hawkeye from M*A*S*H, paid a visit to the University of California, Irvine. In his new guise as host of a science series on American TV, he was exploring the subject of memory. The researchers showed him round, and afterwards took him for a picnic in the park. By the time he came to leave, he had developed a dislike of hard-boiled eggs based on a memory of having made himself sick on them as a child - something that never happened.
"We can easily distort memories for the details of an event that you did experience," says Loftus. "And we can also go so far as to plant entirely false memories - we call them rich false memories because they are so detailed and so big."
She has persuaded people to adopt false but plausible memories - for instance, that at the age of five or six they had the distressing experience of being lost in a shopping mall - as well as implausible ones: memories of witnessing demonic possession, or an encounter with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland. Bugs Bunny is a Warner Brothers character, and as the Los Angeles Times put it earlier this year, "The wascally Warner Bros. Wabbit would be awwested on sight", at Disney.
You NEVER embellish stories when it comes to the military. A complete disrespect for those who serve our country.
He's also being questioned on his Katrina reporting now. He claimed to have witnessed a dead body float past his hotel in the French Quarters but because of the elevation of that small area it didn't even get flooded..
I actually like the guy but he might be in a tailspin here soon.
Not sure if I care or not. The initial report from the Iraq war was true. Then somehow over time it got embellished. He got called out, he apologized. Lets move on, there is more important shit to be dealing with, like ISIS lighting people on fire for fun. BTW Props to Jordan for unleashing hell and fury as a result.
I had to look up what you were talking about. Too bad, he was our graduation speaker and was hilarious. Always liked him after that.
Really no different than Hillary lying about being shot at and everyone gave her a pass on that. Interested to see what happens here.
Does anyone trust mainstream media anymore?
Remember when people used to report the news, and not advance a narrative, thus their career?
It's worth noting that memory is very, very sketchy in these types of events. Studies consistently show that people insert themselves into situations or change facts, particularly in very emotional moments. Many people don't actually remember where they were when they learned about Kennedy's assassination, Challenger, or any number of other things.
Many people, in fact, have very vivid memories of seeing footage of the plane going down in Pennsylvania on 9/11. The only problem...there is no such footage.
How Many of Your Memories Are Fake? - The Atlantic
Do You Really Remember Where You Were on 9/11? | 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11 | 2001 World Trade Center Terrorist Attacks
I don't know what happened here. It doesn't look good. But it's not implausible to think that his memory is inaccurate.