Research Paper on:
Can Recovered Memories and Eyewitness Testimony Be Trusted?

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of his or her recollection - to the third child in line. When the last child finally receives the story, it has typically been modified so drastically from the  original version that it is wholly unrecognizable, a phenomenon of human nature that speaks to the differing perspectives any two people might have of a single situation. The same  holds true with relying upon eyewitness testimony and recovered memories as being concrete evidence in legal proceedings. The inherent fallibility of eyewitness testimony has been the focus of myriad debates,  inasmuch as research illustrates how first-hand observers are easily distracted by certain lines of questioning clearly indicate how their recollection becomes skewed and the answers they provide somehow mesh with  what they perceive to be the truth. Elizabeth Loftus has spent considerable time tracking this particular phenomenon, noting how details become more readily available in conjunction with repeated and  exhaustive questioning; as such, the eyewitnesss answers no longer pertain to the events that occurred, but rather to the questions that are being asked. "We live in a strange  and precarious time that resembles at its heart the hysteria and superstitious fervor of the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Men and women are being accused,  tried, and convicted with no proof or evidence of guilt other than the word of the accuser" (Loftus, 1995, pp. 1-14). Employing recovered memories has proven to be an  even more dangerous approach to getting at the truth in a court case, being that the fairly recent trend toward psychotherapy has rendered myriad individuals with memories of things that  either did not take place or whose truths have been so horribly altered that all that can be retrieved is a smattering of recollection. The techniques by which this