Kicking off with a totally not controversial subject at all: the Brian Williams Iraqi War Scandal

I think this topic hardly needs an introduction after its exhaustive coverage on every news outlet I cared to look at, but in case you missed it, here's the skinny:

NBC anchor Brian Williams claimed on several occasions to have been taken down by enemy fire while riding shotgun in a helicopter in Iraq 12 years ago. Earlier this week it was revealed that he had in fact not been in that helicopter but had been in one nearby, and had come to see the damaged craft.

From sea to shining sea veterans and newscasters cried Lyin' Brian, declaring that he'd openly fabricated the story for his own personal glory. Simultaneously, though, other voices have come out to say that what we heard was not an outright lie, but a mistake, a confabulated memory.

Some express skepticism at this viewpoint, asking how one can possibly mistake a traumatic memory like that, but, as it turns out, confabulation, even in the case of highly traumatic or implausible memories, is extremely common and indeed expected.

Our very own Stephen Novella has posted on this particular topic. He calls for reasonable doubt as the matter of lying, saying that an assumption of malfeasance on Williams' part is overstated and that the science behind confabulated memory makes it highly probable that such an error could have occurred.

Some others say that Brian Williams has a pattern of lying. If true, this would lend circumstantial evidence towards his having lied about the helicopter.

Personally, I think it's premature to conclude any sort of malice on his part, and further point out that one gains little in lying about a well-chronicled event. I do, however, agree with Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons at Slate, who point out that, actually confabulated or not, people have a responsibility to be careful before making statements of that nature. We can never assume our memories are perfect, and confidence in our memories is no guarantee of their accuracy.
Of course, by the same token, I try to understand that if one has a false memory, one may have no indications that it is a false memory, and so a certain amount of understanding and acceptance should therefore follow.

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Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

4072468 I've had a bit of a fun relationship with memory.

During my first year at uni, just before christmas, the rest of my flat went off to go home. Circumstances arose, and I was to return home late: a week later than most of my flatmates.

Being the last one in my house (baring a few stragglers) and with no work left, I retreated to my room and didn't go outside much, and the only human contact I had all week was a very brief conversation with one of my flatmates about milk. I began to lose track of time... quite literally: forgetting which day it was, what time it was... everything went haywire.

When I finally got home and back on track, it was with great surprise that I found out the conversation I had about milk, the one I mentioned earlier, had been with a flatmate who was supposedly in a different city at the time. A hallucination or fabricated memory.

I don't really care to guess whether this is the case here, but throwing in trauma and confusion, I can only say that it's certainly possible to remember one thing, but for it to have never happened. But with the information I possess, I can hardly claim to know anything for sure.

4072468
4072740

Brian Williams makes a claim. As skeptics, we do not accept claims without evidence. The evidence should be proportion to the evidence, or as Professor Carl Sagan said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”. Brian Williams provides no evidence and we have much counter-evidence. Personally, I do not accept his claim and am of the opinion that he lied.

4073484
4072740
You and I both know that it isn't that simple.

If it is, we could simply accuse UFO abductees of lying - except, frankly, they aren't lying. They're confused. Someone can tell a falsehood without lying if they are unaware that it is a falsehood.

From what I've seen, the way Brian Williams responded to the revelation - by wondering if he was crazy, by apologizing openly and apparently sincerely - is consistent with someone who was honestly mistaken and had a confabulated memory.

That strikes me as sufficient evidence to conclude that I cannot claim he was lying without a reasonable doubt. It may be that he is, since i cannot read his mind, but why do you think his story is not consistent with a confabulated memory?