Go back in time. Back to a personal experience. Back to a moment you need to recall clearly, and with great precision.

It won’t be easy. Our minds aren’t cameras.

Maybe the best you can do is get the gist of something, and a few key details. Long-term memories can be fuzzy, fallible, and flat-out wrong.

That’s how they’re described by scientists, who say the brain’s shortcomings and its strengths have largely been over-looked in the politically-charged showdown between psychologist Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.


At a Senate hearing last week, Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her 36 years ago at a party, when they were teenagers.

Ford said she was “100 percent” certain that Kavanaugh was her attacker. He said he was “100 percent” certain that he did nothing of the kind.

It led to a huge political firestorm that grew bigger on Thursday when the FBI provided lawmakers with a report about the controversy.

Eight psychologists and neuroscientists consulted by the Union-Tribune steered clear of choosing sides. But they said this: You need to talk about how memory works, particularly when people are using phrases like “100 percent” certain.


“This is tragic because a person can be 100 percent certain — and be 100 percent wrong,” said Harold Takooshian, a psychology professor at Fordham University in New York. “It happens all of the time in sexual assault cases.

“You see something, you remember it, you recount it. All three steps are highly fallible. Mistakes get made.”

There are many reasons for this, but one dominates.

People strongly encode an experience in their brain if its highly emotional or traumatic or vivid. But over time, some of the details, like paint on a fence, fade away.


“Generally speaking, the longer the delay between the event and recall, the less reliable the memory is,” said Jason Dickinson, a psychology professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

“That’s not to say the memories for things long ago can’t be accurate, or that recent events can’t be forgotten. But time plays a major role in the quality of the memories we recall.”

President Trump jumped on the fact on Tuesday, mocking Ford’s memory at a campaign rally in Mississippi. Although he had earlier called her a “very credible witness,” Trump highlighted some of the gaps Ford has in her knowledge of the alleged assault by Kavanaugh.

Trump said, “How did you get home? ‘I don’t remember.’ How did you get there? ‘I don’t remember.’ Where is the place? ‘I don’t remember.’ How many years ago was it? ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.’ “ White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump was not mocking Ford but recounting her testimony accurately.


Scientists say it would not be unusual for a person to forget seemingly important details, while accurately remembering the essence of an emotional or traumatic event.

Cindy Lustig reminded the public that people don’t have “flashbulb” memories.

“We tend to remember generalities, and even more essentially, what we paid attention to — which in turn is driven by what is important and relevant to us,” said Lustig, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

Larry Squire gave an equally nuanced explanation.


“Strong memories — like something stressful — can last a lifetime,” said Squire, a neuroscientist at UC San Diego and the Veterans Administration.

“But some of the details will fade. Initially, you could describe the room, everything about it. Later on, you remember that the event happened. But maybe now you don’t remember where the bed was in the room, or where the chair was, so easily. Don’t think of memory as a single item. It’s a family of events that make up an episode. Details of the episode are going to weaken. They migrate toward a prototype. Distortions can fill in the missing links.”

The delicate nature of human memory underscores the importance of having people quickly notify authorities when they are victims of crimes, said John Wixted, a psychology professor at UC San Diego.

“What people say right after an event tends to be reliable,” said Wixted. “When (police) show (a victim) a line up within a week of the crime, they pick out the person and say, ‘That’s the guy who did it. I’m positive.’


“They’re almost never wrong.”

It’s a difficult topic to sort out.

“I think (Ford’s) testimony is plausible,” said Jodi Quas, a professor of psychological science at UC San Diego. “It is consistent with how we expect long term memory to operate.

“I am not going to take the next step and say whether I believe her more than (Kavanaugh). At this point, we don’t have the evidence to know that.”


Skip Rizzo, a psychologist at the University of Southern California, said Ford’s “memory for some details could have been impaired, like in not knowing how she got home. Trauma, especially sexual trauma, messes with people. Some people dissociate. If they can’t get away, it is like they go to another place in their conscious. It takes intense effort to pull that off.”

The issue may never be resolved.

“I’m couldn’t believe that they put (Ford and Kavanaugh) on national television to try to figure out which one is telling the truth,” Wixted said. “Scientists can’t tell the difference between a true or a false memory 30 years after it happened.

“How could (the committee)? How could the lay public? Nobody can.”