The recovered memories debate: how reliable is the scholarship?

The disputed issues that comprise the recovered memories controversy are so important that they deserve the most careful and intellectually honest scholarship that the academic and professional community can muster. Drawing partly on illustrative material from the recent Health Care Analysis paper by Goodyear-Smith et al. and associated commentaries, it is argued that the controversy is not being well served. The rules of scholarship are too often broken, with the result that the products are often superficial, containing what should have been readily avoided factual errors, and are sometimes even misleading.