A leading psychologist whose research on human memory exposed her to death threats, lawsuits, personal abuse and a campaign to have her sacked has won a prestigious prize for her courage in standing up for science.

Professor Elizabeth Loftus endured a torrent of abuse from critics who objected to her work on the unreliable nature of eyewitness testimonies, and her defining research on how people can develop rich memories for events that never happened.



The work propelled Loftus into the heart of the 1990 “memory wars”, when scores of people who had gone into therapy with depression, eating disorders and other common psychological problems, came out believing they had recovered repressed memories for traumatic events, often involving childhood abuse.



Loftus, now a professor of law and cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine, performed a series of experiments that showed how exposure to inaccurate information and leading questions could corrupt eyewitness testimonies. More controversially, she demonstrated how therapy and hypnosis could plant completely false childhood memories in patients. She went on to become an expert witness or consultant for hundreds of court cases.



In the 1990s, thousands of repressed memory cases came to light, with affected patients taking legal action against family members, former neighbours, doctors, dentists and teachers. The accusations tore many families apart. As an expert witness in such cases, Loftus came under sustained attack from therapists and patients who were convinced the new-found memories were accurate. The abuse marked a distinct shift away from the good-natured debates she was used to having in academic journals.



“That’s when the fighting got really dirty,” Loftus told the Guardian. “Whenever you work in an area that challenges people’s wrongheaded, cherished beliefs, it can be difficult. But sometimes it can also be a matter of life and death.”



Loftus was awarded the 2016 John Maddox Prize on Thursday for promoting sound science and evidence on a matter of public interest in the face of deep, personal hostility. The prize is named after Sir John Maddox, the former editor of Nature. He was a fierce champion of science who never stood back from the controversial debates of his time.



Sir Colin Blakemore, a neuroscientist and Maddox Prize judge, said Loftus had had an “enormous impact” on cognitive science. “What makes her such a worthy winner of the John Maddox Prize is her determination to use the lessons from her research to challenge courtroom procedures and the unjustified claims of some psychotherapists,” he said.



The prize is awarded jointly by Nature, the Kohn Foundation, and the charity Sense about Science. Previous winners include the psychiatrist Simon Wessely, who faced death threats for his work on chronic fatigue syndrome and mental health, and Edzard Ernst, a scientist and long-standing critic of alternative medicine.



“The recognition is a good thing,” Loftus told the Guardian. “After you have been through some of the things that happened to me – death threats, insults, lawsuits, people trying to drum up letter writing campaigns to get me fired – it’s really important to have something come along like this.”



Loftus had already received hate mail and death threats, and endured a campaign to have her sacked from the University of Washington in Seattle, when she became embroiled in a gruelling legal battle over a case that claimed to be proof of a repressed memory. Jane Doe had accused her mother of abuse when she was a child caught up in a messy divorce and custody battle, but Loftus’s investigation found it quite possible that no abuse ever took place.



The California courts took four years to dismiss 20 of the 21 allegations against Loftus, after which her insurance company agreed to pay a “nuisance settlement” of $7500 rather than fund another trial to settle the final count. “That was quite a distraction, but I kept on running my lab, doing my experiments, and being involved in cases and trying to help wrongfully accused people,” she said.



Loftus never considered leaving her field, but did come to appreciate the soothing powers of “sappy TV movies and white wine,” she said. When she needs reassurance, she turns to a folder she has labelled “WhenBlue”. It is filled with letters of gratitude from accused people. “It’s my place to go when I need to be reminded that I’m on the right track,” she said. When Loftus takes on a case, she does not offer an opinion on whether a person’s memory is real or not, but describes how the memory may have come about if it is false. “I’m often countering misrepresentations and misleading claims that opposing experts make in these cases,” she said.



The memory wars of the 1990s sparked huge public interest, but despite mass media coverage of the cases and the dangers posed by false memories, fresh cases still arise. “You don’t see it in the news so much, but there are still families that are in a state of destruction on account of these unsupported accusations,” she said.



Loftus has helped other scientists who have come under fire from abusive campaigns and urges embattled researchers to seek help from colleagues who have weathered similar storms. She fears that under a climate change-denying President Trump, climate scientists may experience a fresh wave of hostility. “We can’t let the bullies win,” she said. “Somebody has to stand up.”

