Sometimes the "skeptics" are as fallacy-ridden as the new agers and the conspiritainment trolls.
Some, perhaps most, of the things they debunk are indeed bunk. Yet there is no magic truth machine. There is no single ideology, school of thought, church, state institution, or other source that can be considered an infallible source. "Science based medicine" means subjecting claims to scientific scrutiny, but this reads like an official pronouncement from an orthodoxy or a corporate press release.
My uncle was a professor in the field of human sexuality for forty years, knew Kinsey, and certainly was quite skeptical of some "recovered memory" claims such as those of the so-called Satanic Panic. Yet he also was highly critical of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
Here's a pretty good academic site that presents a number of counterpoints:
Unless someone can demonstrate that this is a lie -- that Ralph Underwager did not give an interview to a pedophile magazine -- I think we can see a clear conflict of interest here. Why is the founder of an organization dedicated to "debunking" the notion that memories can be repressed, and that is called to testify in trials to defend those accused of molesting children, himself linked to organizations that advocate the normalization of child sex abuse?
Makes me a bit... umm... skeptical.
Dig a bit and you'll find other links like this one. It's not an isolated example.
"But some recovered memories have been bullshit!"
Of course they have, but using that fact to label all instances of recovered memory the same is fallacious. It's actually a common propaganda technique known as "bad jacketing," and exploits the tendency of the human mind to overzealously categorize. First you create a category, like "recovered memory." Then you spend a lot of time highlighting instances where recovered memories have been shown to be false, and link it to an obvious outbreak of hysteria like the Satanic panic. Finally, you lead people to the conclusion that all recovered memories are false.
"Some A are B, therefore all A are B." It doesn't work that way.
You see a similar dishonest tactic with "conspiracy theory," where the term is used by some to discredit essentially all investigative journalism. If you're reporting on official misconduct then why, you're a "conspiracy theorist!" That means you probably also believe that the Queen of England is a shape shifting reptile and that the military is collaborating with aliens!
I remember people dredging up the "conspiracy nut" term whenever mass surveillance came up before the Snowden leaks finally made the scope of it undeniable.
Finally, back to the Satanic panic...
There was indeed an epidemic of organized child abuse in the 60s-80s (and probably going way back), but it had nothing to do with "Satanism" whatever that is. It had to do with the Catholic Church and numerous other religious institutions. Since then quite a bit of this has come out, and the statistics are pretty horrifying. Might not the emotions dredged up with such memories lead to wild flights of fancy on occasion? Keep in mind that much of this abuse happened to deeply religious children in a church setting. Might not "Satanic" imagery come up as a way for the mind to allegorically describe the sense of betrayal?
I wonder the same thing about some alien abduction accounts. I wonder if the confabulation is part of the defense mechanism that people are using to keep from facing a truth that is at once more mundane and more horrifying.
Some, perhaps most, of the things they debunk are indeed bunk. Yet there is no magic truth machine. There is no single ideology, school of thought, church, state institution, or other source that can be considered an infallible source. "Science based medicine" means subjecting claims to scientific scrutiny, but this reads like an official pronouncement from an orthodoxy or a corporate press release.
My uncle was a professor in the field of human sexuality for forty years, knew Kinsey, and certainly was quite skeptical of some "recovered memory" claims such as those of the so-called Satanic Panic. Yet he also was highly critical of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.
Here's a pretty good academic site that presents a number of counterpoints:
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/tag/fmsf-watch/
This link is particularly illustrative of the problems with FMSF: http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2011/04/18/a-journali...
Unless someone can demonstrate that this is a lie -- that Ralph Underwager did not give an interview to a pedophile magazine -- I think we can see a clear conflict of interest here. Why is the founder of an organization dedicated to "debunking" the notion that memories can be repressed, and that is called to testify in trials to defend those accused of molesting children, himself linked to organizations that advocate the normalization of child sex abuse?
Makes me a bit... umm... skeptical.
Dig a bit and you'll find other links like this one. It's not an isolated example.
"But some recovered memories have been bullshit!"
Of course they have, but using that fact to label all instances of recovered memory the same is fallacious. It's actually a common propaganda technique known as "bad jacketing," and exploits the tendency of the human mind to overzealously categorize. First you create a category, like "recovered memory." Then you spend a lot of time highlighting instances where recovered memories have been shown to be false, and link it to an obvious outbreak of hysteria like the Satanic panic. Finally, you lead people to the conclusion that all recovered memories are false.
"Some A are B, therefore all A are B." It doesn't work that way.
You see a similar dishonest tactic with "conspiracy theory," where the term is used by some to discredit essentially all investigative journalism. If you're reporting on official misconduct then why, you're a "conspiracy theorist!" That means you probably also believe that the Queen of England is a shape shifting reptile and that the military is collaborating with aliens!
I remember people dredging up the "conspiracy nut" term whenever mass surveillance came up before the Snowden leaks finally made the scope of it undeniable.
Finally, back to the Satanic panic...
There was indeed an epidemic of organized child abuse in the 60s-80s (and probably going way back), but it had nothing to do with "Satanism" whatever that is. It had to do with the Catholic Church and numerous other religious institutions. Since then quite a bit of this has come out, and the statistics are pretty horrifying. Might not the emotions dredged up with such memories lead to wild flights of fancy on occasion? Keep in mind that much of this abuse happened to deeply religious children in a church setting. Might not "Satanic" imagery come up as a way for the mind to allegorically describe the sense of betrayal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_c...
Just to show it's not a single denomination:
http://www.stopbaptistpredators.org/index.htm
I wonder the same thing about some alien abduction accounts. I wonder if the confabulation is part of the defense mechanism that people are using to keep from facing a truth that is at once more mundane and more horrifying.