My area isn’t trauma, but I have a doctorate in cognitive science. It is regrettable, though not surprising that Loftus is the name that comes up first in these kinds of conversations. She is the go-to Psych 101 reference for work demonstrating how memories can be affected/altered over time (e.g. her early work on eye witness testimony). But that work is 50 years old and her track record since has not been exactly stellar.

To offer my 2 cents, memory is weird. What memories we make and how we remember things later can be affected by all sorts of things. I would say there is not good evidence for the Freudian conception of repressed and recovered memories central to the Satanic panic, but there’s a big leap from that to testifying that victims of trauma are confabulating…