As I was avoiding the last of my end-of-the-semester grading, I caught an episode of the show Frontiers. In this episode, Alan Alda interviews brain researchers studying memory. The segment that intrigued me most is entitled, "When Memory Lies."
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1402/video/watchonline.htm
Hmmm... truth, reality, and a gerenal belief in either caught my attention, but what kept me watching is my interest in research methodology. After completing two questionnaires about his food likes and dislikes and childhood eating experiences, Alan Alda is told that a "very, very sophisticated computer program" reviewed his survey results and came up with several statements about his past eating experiences, one of which is a claim that as a child, he had gotten sick from eating hard boiled eggs. Contensiously, Alan Alda denies having had any negative experiences with hard boiled eggs. Then, Elizabeth Loftus, the principle researcher and one attempting the persuasion, asks Alda to complete the same questionnaire about childhood eating experiences. This time, rather than selecting a 1 for definitely did not happen, Alda selects a 2. Arguing that Alda was convinced by her "suggestion" that he had had a negative experience with hard boilded eggs, Loftus emphasizes her study's conclusions that suggestions can lead people to have false memories and even change their behaviors based upon those untruths.
Loftus never discusses the role of technology in her research. She doesn't even seem to entertain her own rhetoric about technology and her continued emphasis that the "very, very smart computer" had on her seeming ability to persuade Alda to shift from a 1 to a 2. She also fails to interrogate the significant differences between the power to persuade someone about past food experiences and convincing someone about past abuse which is typically associated with false memory accusations.
The segment made me wonder a great deal more about the ethics of research practices and the assumptions that both technology and information are neutral. Technology is simply a tool to interpret data, and the narratives associated with the power of technology are not questioned as integral to the "suggestive process." Also, the information used in the study--past food experiences--is suggested to be equatible with the types of memories often assumed to be false.
It makes me feel lucky that my grandmother only once tried to feed me strawberry cake with chocolate icing topped with red hots and stale circus peanuts. Folks might not have believed me had she committed a worse crime.
Amy
Posted by at May 29, 2004 09:06 PM | TrackBack