This American Life, 2002, Ask an Expert

[Dr Carrot]

I thought this was an interesting podcast to listen to from way back in the early 2000s. Specifically, it shows how if people unquestioningly carry out therapies that are based on poor science they can have devastating consequences.

I’m sure you could draw parallels with some of the issues we face as a community, but it’s also just a really good listen. Link and description below.

Alix Spiegel reports on the "Recovered Memory" movement. In the early 1990s people across America turned to experts in psychology for help...and many people were told that the source of their problems could be traced to traumatic events they could not even remember, to memories that had to be recovered through special techniques. In the last ten years, this whole approach to psychology has fallen out of favor. So what happened that so many experts came to believe in a treatment that turned out to make many of their patients worse, not better...and what happened when the patients and therapists figured all this out?

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/215/ask-an-expert/act-one