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The Big Idea

Memory wars

Duration: 9 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC World Service OnlineLatest broadcast: on BBC World Service East Asia

Available for over a year

Many criminal court cases rest on eye-witness accounts of what happened. There’s a problem though. Elizabeth Loftus – one of the world’s most influential psychologists – has shown in numerous experiments that memory is not nearly as reliable as we once believed. It is easy to alter memories. It’s even quite easy to implant entirely false memories – making people believe they remember something which never occurred.

Presented by David Edmonds

(Photo: Brain and eraser, Photo credit: Shutterstock) Show less

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