Elizabeth Loftus is an American cognitive psychologist who specializes in false and recovered memories. After being mistakenly told that she had witnessed her mother’s tragic death, Loftus began to delve into the malleability and frailty of human memory. She studied at UCLA to get her Bachelor’s in mathematics and psychology and continued to get her Master’s and Ph.D in Stanford. Loftus had done extensive research analyzing thousands of eyewitness testimonies which led to the discovery of the misinformation effect, a paradigm where memories are altered when previously presented with incorrect or misleading information.