Why your childhood memories may not actually have happened.

[Igel]

45. But then what do you do with the allegations?

Since any one might be false.

Do you just accept a kind of statistical punishment? "We estimate that 10% of sexual abuse memories are false, therefore we'll look at all the cases of sexual abuse that reach a guilty verdict and randomly toss out 10% of them"?

And if we even say yes to that kind of criminal justice, you can't really apply stats to an individual case. If there's, say, a 10% chance that the person's wrong, do we apply 90% of the punishment? Apply it to 90% of the accused?

Etc.


If we are gullible, we convict the guilty. If we're too skeptical, we exculpate the guilty.

Traditionally, in theory we absolve the guilty when there's doubt. That's one version of "justice."

Traditionally, in practice if we're outraged we demand a pound of flesh without caring about things like provable guilt or innocence. That's the kind of justice that satisfies gut-level thinking.