So it turns out that an organization I thought was doing good work, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (associated with Center for Inquiry, James Randi, and Martin Gardner) was actually caping for pedophiles. Uhhhh oops?

Since this, bizarrely, turned out to be one of my longest videos ever (??) here's a quick thread to sum it up for those of you like myself with short attention spans. 1/10
In the '90s the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was founded to call attention to the problem of adults suddenly "remembering" child abuse that never actually happened, often under hypnosis. Skeptics like James Randi & Martin Gardner joined their board. 2/10
A new article reveals that the FMSF was founded by parents who had been credibly and PRIVATELY accused of molestation by their now-adult daughter. They publicized the accusation, destroyed the daughter's reputation, and started the foundation. 3/10 https://t.co/0tIP7x03SG
The FMSF assumed any accused pedo who joined was innocent, saying "We are a good-looking bunch of people, graying hair, well dressed, healthy, smiling; just about every person who has attended is someone you would surely find interesting and want to count as a friend" 😬 4/10
Turns out, psychologists don't recognize "false memory syndrome" as an actual disorder. There's a lot of disagreement over the extent to which memory can be manipulated & later recalled, and a lot of valid criticism of "false memory" research. 5/10
Oh, also? Two board members of FMSF gave an interview to a pro-pedophilia magazine, saying pedophilia is a "responsible" choice and an "acceptable expression of God's will." 6/10
That said, The Cut article is unfair in a few respects. It casually says (prominent skeptic) Elizabeth Loftus defended Ted Bundy without mentioning that she was likely right: cops may have manipulated the witness to ID Bundy. They just happened to have the right guy. 7/10
Also, people like Loftus have been instrumental in stopping cops from pressuring both witnesses and suspects into "remembering" or admitting to crimes that never happened. It happens often and leads to innocent people ending up in prison. 8/10
Loftus testified in the McMartin Preschool trial, in which teachers were accused of raping kids -- and also of flying around like demons. One kid said Chuck Norris was one of the rapists. The kids were manipulated. After 6 years, the teachers were exonerated. 9/10
Yes, memory can be manipulated, but also, guilty pedophiles will jump aboard an organization that claims they're innocent with no investigation. Prominent skeptics didn't do their due diligence & got conned because of it. 10/10 https://t.co/zkkBPYBsAk

More from Science

Hugh Everett's birthday! Pioneer of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Let us celebrate by thinking about ontological extravagance. I will do so by way of analogy, because I have found that everyone loves analogies and nobody ever willfully misconstrues them.


We look at the night sky and see photons arriving to us, emitted by distant stars. Let's contrast two different theories about how stars emit photons.

One theory says, we know how stars shine, and our equations predict that they emit photons roughly uniformly in all directions. Call this the "Many-Photons Interpretation" (MPI).

But! Others object. That is *so many photons*. Most of which we don't observe, and can't observe, since they're moving away at the speed of light. It's too ontologically extravagant to posit a huge number of unobservable things!

So they suggest a "Photon Collapse Interpretation." According to this theory, the photons emitted toward us actually exist. But photons that would be emitted in directions we will never observe simply collapse into utter non-existence.
Ever since @JesseJenkins and colleagues work on a zero carbon US and this work by @DrChrisClack and colleagues on incorporating DER, I've been having the following set of thoughts about how to reduce the risk of failure in a US clean energy buildout. Bottom line is much more DER.


Typically, when we see zero-carbon electricity coupled to electrification of transport and buildings, implicitly standing behind that is totally unprecedented buildout of the transmission system. The team from Princeton's modeling work has this in spades for example.

But that, more even than the new generation required, runs straight into a thicket/woodchipper of environmental laws and public objections that currently (and for the last 50y) limit new transmission in the US. We built most transmission prior to the advent of environmental law.

So what these studies are really (implicitly) saying is that NEPA, CEQA, ESA, §404 permitting, eminent domain law, etc, - and the public and democratic objections that drive them - will have to change in order to accommodate the necessary transmission buildout.

I live in a D supermajority state that has, for at least the last 20 years, been in the midst of a housing crisis that creates punishing impacts for people's lives in the here-and-now and is arguably mostly caused by the same issues that create the transmission bottlenecks.

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