Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_Roger]

marg is making an excellent point. Memory theory is only relied on to "explain" the S/R witnesses because it is convenient. Not because it fits the situation.

Glenn wrote:

Okay... let's do it. Tell me how this all goes down. Let's start with John and Martha. How much of their statements do you accept?

That they heard Spalding read from a manuscript.

And this is a clear case in point. When asked to get a bit deeper to show exactly how memory theory applies to the specifics in the S/R case, Glenn, like all S/R critics I've seen so far, avoids going there. I think that's because he realizes he's going to run into problems diagnosing the "false" memories as distinct from the "true" memories in a way that does not make it obvious he's merely picking and choosing memories he doesn't like precisely because they conflict with his own Book of Mormon production theory.

Memory theory is appealed to because it is convenient, not because it actually explains anything with regard to this alleged specific case.

[_GlennThigpen]

And this is a clear case in point. When asked to get a bit deeper to show exactly how memory theory applies to the specifics in the S/R case, Glenn, like all S/R critics I've seen so far, avoids going there. I think that's because he realizes he's going to run into problems diagnosing the "false" memories as distinct from the "true" memories in a way that does not make it obvious he's merely picking and choosing memories he doesn't like precisely because they conflict with his own Book of Mormon production theory.

Memory theory is appealed to because it is convenient, not because it actually explains anything with regard to this alleged specific case.

Elizabeth F. Loftus in "Creating False Memories"

My own research into memory distortion goes back to the early 1970s, when I began studies of the "misinformation effect." These studies show that when people who witness an event are later exposed to new and misleading information about it, their recollections often become distorted. In one example, participants viewed a simulated automobile accident at an intersection with a stop sign. After the viewing, half the participants received a suggestion that the traffic sign was a yield sign. When asked later what traffic sign they remembered seeing at the intersection, those who had been given the suggestion tended to claim that they had seen a yield sign. Those who had not received the phony information were much more accurate in their recollection of the traffic sign.


Misinformation has the potential for invading our memories when we talk to other people, when we are suggestively interrogated or when we read or view media coverage about some event that we may have experienced ourselves. After more than two decades of exploring the power of misinformation, researchers have learned a great deal about the conditions that make people susceptible to memory modification. Memories are more easily modified, for instance, when the passage of time allows the original memory to fade.

This is exactly apropos to the Conneaut Witnesses. If the other witnesses had given much the same observations, you might have a case, but their memories are quite different, without the names and phrases such as by land and sea, etc.

Glenn

[_Roger]

Glenn wrote:

Because he was out to prove that Hurlbut started the whole thing! Even Dan Vogel doesn't accept that

For much the same reasons he does not accept the Hurlbut affidavits. Hurlbut was on a mission to discredit Joseph Smith.

So it's an interesting mix we have participating here. Dan himself offers this:

The Conneaut witnesses made their claims before Hurlbut interviewed them, largely because they heard Mormon missionaries reading or explaining the Book of Mormon in public gatherings. Hurlbut was sent there to investigate these claims. Contrary to what you might assume, I do accept Hurlbut’s affidavits from the Smiths’ Palmyra/Manchester neighbors as primary historical sources, and I reject Mormon apologists’ attempts to dismiss them as Hurlbut fabrications. Sure, Hurbut was on a mission to discredit Joseph Smith, which made him chose people who had negative evidence, but that doesn’t mean the statements are fabrications or that their content is historically unreliable. Each statement is the signer’s responsibility, not Hurlbut’s, and none accused Hurlbut of manufacturing their statement.

So, I agree with Dan on this one to a point, but this does raise the question of why--if "Each statement is the signer’s responsibility, not Hurlbut’s, and none accused Hurlbut of manufacturing their statement--is Dan so quick to assume false memories on the part of the Conneaut witnesses as distinct from any of the others? As Dale points out, surely Dan does not credit false memories as accounting for 100% of their memories. If so, then how does Dan decide which elements in the Conneaut statements are "true" memories vs the "false" ones?

I'd like to see both Glenn and Dan separate the true memories from the false ones beginning with John and Martha's accounts.

Glenn writes:

You have missed the point of memory substitution as to the names. I would suggest that Lake is being innovative with the truth when he is recounting the tale of his reaction to his wife reading from the Book of Mormon. One does not have to be a simpleton to have false memories.

But again, Glenn is reluctant to separate truth from falsity in Lake's account. Instead he simply puts forth the general assertion that "Lake is being innovative with the truth" --which, of course, goes against Dan's logic that allows him not to accuse the witnesses of lying.

So which is it? How much of these statements do Dan and Glenn accept and what are the points they reject, and more importantly, why?

[_marg]

[

I don’t use false memory theory to prove the Conneaut witnesses were mistaken, but to show that there is an explanation if we decide Joseph Smith was the sole author. What makes false memory theory “likely” in this instance is the historically stronger Mormon testimony.

In order for false memory theory to be "likely" Dan, it would have to actually be applicable to the situation with the Conneaut witnesses. If Loftus's theory and the way in which you have been using it is not applicable to the situation then you can't use "false memory theory to reject all the Conneaut witness statements.

I'm planning today or tomorrow to address a post of yours you wrote a few years back in which you applied false memory theory as laid out by E. Loftus, as a warrant to reject the Conneaut witnesses statements. And in my opinion you have misapplied the theory. As I pointed out in a previous post in her studies she had an approximate 25 % success rate of implanting a false memory of a personal event and that was done by employing authority such as enlisting help of parents in order to convince subjects to doubt their memory at the age of 5 was accurate or reliable.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Marg writes:

But this is not the situation with the Conneaut witnesses. I won't quote them for brevity. But many looked at the Book of Mormon before giving their statement to Hurlbut. And what they said was that with the passage of time, they had forgotten some aspects of the Spalding story but that certain aspects they CLEARLY remembered. This is not unusual because many described frequent repeated exposure of material that interested them. In addition, though this is not something I've come across Loftus discussing, but some ideas, concepts, words can have what Malcolm Gladwell calls a "stickiness factor".

There are, of course, a number of problems with this notion.

The first is, quite simply, that the descriptions we get are all way too similar. The second is that the similarities are not restricted to elements from the Book of Mormon. So, the overlap in language isn't limited to recollections of a text. And this means that it is not a "stickiness factor" that influenced the descriptions provided by the witnesses.

If we use Dale's method, Martha Spalding's comments are 279 words long. When we compare the vocabulary of Martha's text to the other 7 texts published by Howe, we discover something truly remarkable. The vocabulary overlap of this short piece of text? Just under 86%. Shared exact three word phrases? There are a whopping 28 of them (that's an identical three word phrase ever 10 words in the text). The longest string of words with matching identical phrases is 13 words long.

And this is just exact readings. We might compare similar wording, right? So, we have Martha writing:

"He gave a particular account of their journey by land and sea, till they arrived in America, ..."

We have John S. writing:

"It gave a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and sea, till they arrived in America, ..."

Then we have John M.:

"He brought them off from Jerusalem, ... detailing their travels by land and water, ..."

Oliver wrote:

"He said he intended to trace their journey from Jeruslaem, by land and sea, till their arrival in America, ..."

These similarities in verbiage - the phrasing, the language, the vocabulary (and this is just one example - there are many more) are much more similar than the similarities between the known Spalding manuscript and the Book of Mormon that Dale presents. Given the size of the texts, the density of overlap is astonishing. And it doesn't just occur in details about the text, but in the details about Spalding, and the details of their own recollections and memories. Yet, when we discuss this, there are a million other explanations for these similarities - and reliance on a common source is never once brought forward as being a realistic option - or that these accounts in the texts themselves show evidence that the authors of these statements were somehow in collaboration.

Finally, as I keep pointing out, there isn't a single detail in any of these sets of comments, that we cannot find discussed in published comments about the Book of Mormon. John Miller's "Straits of Darien"? Pratt had been discussing this (we find published accounts of it) in his own theories of geography by early 1832.

I remain convinced that the details of the written statements provided by the witnesses were for the most part not original to them. Certainly the texts of these statements themselves provides ample reasoning for Vogel to be very wary of accepting them at face value.

The issue here is that regardless of the way the facts are presented - how and why these statements were collected - we have the statements themselves, and when we examine the texts, we learn something from them that isn't based on speculation or theory - it is real evidence. We aren't talking about hypothetical missing manuscripts - we have texts that we can compare, and the similarities are far more startling than any comparison made between Alma chapters and various proposed authors.

I don't need memory manipulation. The statements in the texts about memory also follow this shared pattern. This isn't memory manipulation - the comments on memories are a part of the template that was used to create these witnesses accounts ....

Ben McGuire

[_Nomad]

Marg writes:

But this is not the situation with the Conneaut witnesses. I won't quote them for brevity. But many looked at the Book of Mormon before giving their statement to Hurlbut. And what they said was that with the passage of time, they had forgotten some aspects of the Spalding story but that certain aspects they CLEARLY remembered. This is not unusual because many described frequent repeated exposure of material that interested them. In addition, though this is not something I've come across Loftus discussing, but some ideas, concepts, words can have what Malcolm Gladwell calls a "stickiness factor".

There are, of course, a number of problems with this notion.

The first is, quite simply, that the descriptions we get are all way too similar. The second is that the similarities are not restricted to elements from the Book of Mormon. So, the overlap in language isn't limited to recollections of a text. And this means that it is not a "stickiness factor" that influenced the descriptions provided by the witnesses.

If we use Dale's method, Martha Spalding's comments are 279 words long. When we compare the vocabulary of Martha's text to the other 7 texts published by Howe, we discover something truly remarkable. The vocabulary overlap of this short piece of text? Just under 86%. Shared exact three word phrases? There are a whopping 28 of them (that's an identical three word phrase ever 10 words in the text). The longest string of words with matching identical phrases is 13 words long.

And this is just exact readings. We might compare similar wording, right? So, we have Martha writing:

"He gave a particular account of their journey by land and sea, till they arrived in America, ..."

We have John S. writing:

"It gave a detailed account of their journey from Jerusalem, by land and sea, till they arrived in America, ..."

Then we have John M.:

"He brought them off from Jerusalem, ... detailing their travels by land and water, ..."

Oliver wrote:

"He said he intended to trace their journey from Jeruslaem, by land and sea, till their arrival in America, ..."

These similarities in verbiage - the phrasing, the language, the vocabulary (and this is just one example - there are many more) are much more similar than the similarities between the known Spalding manuscript and the Book of Mormon that Dale presents. Given the size of the texts, the density of overlap is astonishing. And it doesn't just occur in details about the text, but in the details about Spalding, and the details of their own recollections and memories. Yet, when we discuss this, there are a million other explanations for these similarities - and reliance on a common source is never once brought forward as being a realistic option - or that these accounts in the texts themselves show evidence that the authors of these statements were somehow in collaboration.

Finally, as I keep pointing out, there isn't a single detail in any of these sets of comments, that we cannot find discussed in published comments about the Book of Mormon. John Miller's "Straits of Darien"? Pratt had been discussing this (we find published accounts of it) in his own theories of geography by early 1832.

I remain convinced that the details of the written statements provided by the witnesses were for the most part not original to them. Certainly the texts of these statements themselves provides ample reasoning for Vogel to be very wary of accepting them at face value.

The issue here is that regardless of the way the facts are presented - how and why these statements were collected - we have the statements themselves, and when we examine the texts, we learn something from them that isn't based on speculation or theory - it is real evidence. We aren't talking about hypothetical missing manuscripts - we have texts that we can compare, and the similarities are far more startling than any comparison made between Alma chapters and various proposed authors.

I don't need memory manipulation. The statements in the texts about memory also follow this shared pattern. This isn't memory manipulation - the comments on memories are a part of the template that was used to create these witnesses accounts ....

Ben McGuire

I've only been lurking and observing this thread from a distance, but I think this post is, by far, the most devastating to date concerning these "coached" witnesses to a Spalding connection to the Book of Mormon.

Benjamin, you've mentioned a utility of some sort that permits you to make these comparisons between texts. I'm curious about it. PM me if you'd rather not derail this thread with a discussion about this tool you have.

[_Roger]

I also find these back to back posts from Dan interesting:

Rather than believe the possibility that the memories of the Conneaut witnesses were mistaken, which to seems like a textbook case of the phenomenon, Roger would rather cling to the unsupported and extremely unlikely speculations that Whitmer and other supporting witnesses either lied or didn’t observe Joseph Smith using a MS in the translating room.

....and...

I don’t use false memory theory to prove the Conneaut witnesses were mistaken, but to show that there is an explanation if we decide Joseph Smith was the sole author. What makes false memory theory “likely” in this instance is the historically stronger Mormon testimony.

So I'm not quite sure exactly what Dan wants me to change in the way of my thinking on this--and I am being sincere here, not sarcastic. I realize Dan would say the above is not a contradiction--and because he added "but to show that there is an explanation..." I agree, it isn't, however, even given that, I'm not clear how and why he suggests I change my thinking on this.

The reason I think it is very unlikely that the Conneaut witnesses were merely "mistaken" is because of the specific claims they make and their adamance in making them, coupled with my own experience. The things they are adamant about are exactly the things I would expect them to remember if they had actually been exposed to what they claim to have been exposed to and, the things they claim to be fuzzy on, fit my own experience as well.

He cites his personal, and anecdotal evidence (which doesn’t at all fit the Spalding witnesses),

Yes, I'm afraid it does Dan. Here you are stuck with a living witness telling you how his own personal experience meshes with the hypothesized experiences you are attempting to place on eight historical figures. You can't simply proclaim that it doesn't at all fit, and expect me to take that as a serious response. It does fit with regard to the question of whether one can remember the names of the lead characters in a book one was exposed to more than 20 years in the past, and, if so, how confident would one be in one's memories of those names.

to brush aside the false memory theory, and then offers his own unsupported assertion that the Mormon witnesses lied, which he tries to support by illogical and polemical arguments—and he can’t understand why we don’t take him seriously?

Your defense of Whitmer--in the face of contradictions you acknowledge but choose to define as "apparent contradictions" or as "minor discrepancies"--is about as polemic as anything I've seen from LDS apologists.

All the best.

[_marg]

Elizabeth F. Loftus in "Creating False Memories"

My own research into memory distortion goes back to the early 1970s, when I began studies of the "misinformation effect." These studies show that when people who witness an event are later exposed to new and misleading information about it, their recollections often become distorted. In one example, participants viewed a simulated automobile accident at an intersection with a stop sign. After the viewing, half the participants received a suggestion that the traffic sign was a yield sign. When asked later what traffic sign they remembered seeing at the intersection, those who had been given the suggestion tended to claim that they had seen a yield sign. Those who had not received the phony information were much more accurate in their recollection of the traffic sign.


Misinformation has the potential for invading our memories when we talk to other people, when we are suggestively interrogated or when we read or view media coverage about some event that we may have experienced ourselves. After more than two decades of exploring the power of misinformation, researchers have learned a great deal about the conditions that make people susceptible to memory modification. Memories are more easily modified, for instance, when the passage of time allows the original memory to fade.

This is exactly apropos to the Conneaut Witnesses. If the other witnesses had given much the same observations, you might have a case, but their memories are quite different, without the names and phrases such as by land and sea, etc.

Glenn

Glenn if you look at the context of the study by E. Loftus which you quote, she gives examples of situations in which people don't have a clear memory of an event. They may have observed quickly, perhaps only one time, or the detail in question they didn't focus on. Also in the examples the alternative suggestions generally are ones which are potentially easily confusable with the true facts and tend to be relatively small details. In those cases when she took 1/2 of the subjects and exposed them to a suggested phony detail those exposed to the "phony detail TENDED to claim" they'd seen that ...while others who hadn't been exposed were more likely to be accurate on the true facts.

This is common sense, that I believe the majority of people can relate to through personal experience. It is much more difficult to succeed in confusing a subject on what they remember if they have a clear memory or have trust in their memory. And while E. Loftus studies focus on problems with memories that doesn't mean that memories are always fallible. Just because passage of time tends to diminish memory accuracy doesn't mean all memory with everyone is lost completely with passage of time. People generally can appreciate when they have a clear memory on a detail versus other times when they may not, or they can appreciate whether on average they have a good memory or not. And when there is consensus on key facts with a number of individuals as is the case with the Conneaut witnesses it becomes less likely that they all suffer from inaccurate memory of key details.

[_Uncle Dale]

...the descriptions we get are all way too similar.
...

Yes, indeed -- far too many mentions of the Ten Lost Tribes
traveling by land and by sea, from Jerusalem, across the
Behring Straits, to become the American Indians.

I wonder who implanted that particular memory in people's
minds? It is partly found in Howe's book, and again in some
testimony from other people in the Conneaut area.

It doesn't quite match the Book of Mormon narrative -- so
the false memory (if that is what it is) doesn't seem very
useful to those trying to destroy the Church.

Here are a few of the Ohio/Pennsylvania "witnesses" -- not
including those from the Pittsburgh/Amity/Peters Creek area:



I wonder if we might not be able to come up with a half
dozen or more old accounts, to add to these familiar ones?

http://premormon.com/resources/r002/002Baker.pdf

UD

[_Roger]

Ben writes:

And it doesn't just occur in details about the text, but in the details about Spalding, and the details of their own recollections and memories. Yet, when we discuss this, there are a million other explanations for these similarities - and reliance on a common source is never once brought forward as being a realistic option - or that these accounts in the texts themselves show evidence that the authors of these statements were somehow in collaboration.

So if I am following Ben, we actually agree. I think I hear Ben saying that active collaboration to present unified testimony better explains the statements than does false memories.

Again, this seems to be Ben's point:

I don't need memory manipulation. The statements in the texts about memory also follow this shared pattern. This isn't memory manipulation - the comments on memories are a part of the template that was used to create these witnesses accounts ....

It's odd that I should agree with Ben, but I do--at least on that point.