Ran across this and it is a real eye-opener:
When I first heard about the explosion I was sitting in my freshman dorm room with my roommate and we were watching TV," wrote an Emory University student who participated in a memory study a year and a half after the Challenger disaster. "It came on as a news flash and we were both totally shocked."
But that same student had given a surprisingly different answer, just 24 hours after the tragedy. "I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about [it]," she wrote. "I didn't know any details except that it had exploded and the schoolteacher's students had all been watching which I thought was so sad."
The researchers who had hustled to gather these reports found that by 1988 and 1989, not one of their 44 subjects remembered the Challenger's explosion the same way they had in its immediate aftermath.
Since eyewitness recollection is a foundation of our justice system, this is more than a little concerning.But that same student had given a surprisingly different answer, just 24 hours after the tragedy. "I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about [it]," she wrote. "I didn't know any details except that it had exploded and the schoolteacher's students had all been watching which I thought was so sad."
The researchers who had hustled to gather these reports found that by 1988 and 1989, not one of their 44 subjects remembered the Challenger's explosion the same way they had in its immediate aftermath.
