Memory and conspiracy theorism

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I was watching a thing on Discovery Channel tonight about the Roswell/UFO thing which surprisingly and uncharacteristicly turned out to be a smart and well done debunking of said ufology conspiracy theories.

OF note was an experiement performed by the investigative team in which a group of people were taken on (what they thought was) a "nature hike" wearing helmet cams. As part of the tour/hike the leader(a discovery channel plant) led them past a staged crash site with men in camoflauge uniforms standing around the site which was roped off with yellow caution tape.

The hike leader told the others that there was some sort of crash there and the military were there to keep people away from the investigation(he was very convincing with some added details about them stopping him days prior as he approached the site). Nothing more was said and the group was quickly ushered onward and finished their tour/hike thing.

One month later they were apporached by a clinical psychologist posing as someone from the focus group or whatever that initially hired them to go on the nature hike thing and asked to recall details about the things they saw. When they came to discussing the part about the "crash site" they were absolutely certain they recalled all sorts of extraordinary details such as the miltary men having machine guns and pointing them at the hikers, scattered debris, etc.

Their helmet cameras of course had the actual dirt. No such details were ever observed by these people and yet their memories, which they were absolutely certain were accurate, told them otherwise. In other words they were not lieing...it is just a simple fact that memory is VERY unreliable and subject to distortion. these peoples' memories were so distorted in just a month!

What does this say about JFK conspiracy theorists who "were there", Roswell "eyewitnesses", and Johnathan Edward's victims...er, "readees", many of whom are relying on memories that are years if not decades old?

Of course this is not news to skeptics who have been aware of the fallibilty of memory for ages but this little fact is rarely if ever presented in the popular media so I thought it interesting.

 

Wow - assuming that everything happened as the show portrayed - that sounds pretty interesting. People are so gullible most of the time - I have no faith in what most loonies and deluded people say.

What I was always found interesting was that the common picture of aliens that these people all seem to have come up with in 1980s and 1990s (that prove they must be right because they can't all be making up the same thing) look exactly like the aliens in the band in the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars. Which came first??

 

Actually, the common conception of the bulbous-headed, large-black-pupiless eyed, grey aliens was mostly inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind which was released right around the same time as Star Wars( a bit earlier in the same year IIRC). The movie was such an event that it sparked off a the huge wave of ufology including the Roswell conspiracy thing(which did not start up until 1978...AFTER Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind became a huge hit and some three decades after the weather balloon crash in NM).