Many people believe in the existence of widespread "repressed" child sexual abuse and organized satanic cults. Such beliefs occur despite lack of evidence supporting them, influenced instead by reliance on authorities and social consensus. In addition, people fail to understand the fallibility of retrospective memory, erroneously assume that high confidence in a memory means that it is accurate, and mistakenly believe that more information necessarily implies a better grasp of reality. Compounding this problem is the diminution in the scientific training of licensed therapists. When therapists themselves have not been inoculated with scientific skepticism, they will not inoculate their clients and will instead contribute to the epidemic of irrational beliefs.
-Robyn M. Dawes
http://www.fmsfonline.org/dawes.html
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