The Reality of Repressed Memories. In 1990, a landmark case went to trial in Redwood City, California.
The defendant, George Franklin, Sr., 51 years old, stood trial for a murder that had occurred more than 20 years earlier. The victim, 8-year-old (Susan Kay Nason, was murdered on September 22, 1969). Franklin's daughter, Eileen, only 8 years old herself at the time of the murder, provided the major evidence against her father. What was unusual about the case is that Eileen's memory of witnessing the murder had been repressed for more than 20 years. Eileen's memory did not come back all at once. Eileen's memory report was believed by her therapist, by several members of her family, and by the San Mateo County district attorney's office, which chose to prosecute her father. Eileen's detailed and confident memory impressed a number of people.
On the other hand, the clinical anecdotes and the loose theory used to explain them remain unconvincing to some psychotherapists and to many laboratory researchers. Popular Articles. The Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. The Misconception: You take randomness into account when determining cause and effect.
The Truth: You tend to ignore random chance when the results seem meaningful or when you want a random event to have a meaningful cause. Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy were both presidents of the United States, elected 100 years apart. Both were shot and killed by assassins who were known by three names with 15 letters, John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, and neither killer would make it to trial. Spooky, huh? Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. They were both killed on a Friday while sitting next to their wives, Lincoln in the Ford Theater, Kennedy in a Lincoln made by Ford. Both men were succeeded by a man named Johnson – Andrew for Lincoln and Lyndon for Kennedy. What are the odds? In 1898, Morgan Robertson wrote a novel titled “Futility.” The novel describes a giant boat called the Titan which everyone considers unsinkable.
Wow. The Sneaky Psychology Of Advertising. Responsive Ad Demos. My previous post was about some of the business challenges surrounding responsive design and advertising.
I wrote it just after reading Mark Boulton’s excellent Responsive Advertising, which was written earlier this week and which you should definitely read if you haven’t already. While I still think the business challenges are the greater obstacle, the technical challenges are interesting and beg for experimentation. I couldn’t help from spending a few hours toying with possible solutions. Here are two demos. Responsive HTML ad My first idea was to build an HTML ad that could shift itself into 3 different standard IAB sizes: 728×90, 300×250, and 300×50.
This works in latest versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. Responsive/Adaptive HTML ad using a JavaScript interface This one is based on the same idea but does two things differently. This lets you define your responsive campaign with some settings and then the JavaScript does the rest. Coda.