benefits outweigh the potential risk for children involved. Another commentary written by Goodman, Quas and Redlich argues that there is reason to believe that children in general enjoy participating in false memory studies and that the benefits of these studies for research into eyewitness memory are many. They also refer to several cases where memory implantation studies have been cited in court and contributed to convictions being overturned. Thompson and Jackson propose a modified version of the suggestions from Herrmann and Yoder and say that methods for being more ethically aware when doing research with children have to be developed. Also Westcott agrees with the general concerns about researchers having to take extra care when working with children. In their responding article to all the commentaries Yoder and Herrmann again question whether memory implantation research with children is necessary and conclude that ethical guidelines should be put in place by Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC). Although all the researchers involved in these commentaries from this issue of Applied Cognitive Psychology put forward different arguments, the general consensus was that doing research with children calls for extra care and the benefits from the research must outweigh potential risk to the participating children. General criticism of the concept The Unconscious in therapies Sociologist Richard Ofshe, an expert on false memories due to coercive interrogations as well as suggestive therapies, has testified as expert witness in many court cases dealing with spectacular legal scandals. Based on these experiences he published in 1999, together with a co-author, a fundamental criticism of the concept of the unconscious, because he considered it as the main underlying cause of the implanted memories he had been dealing with:.... the idea of the dynamic unconscious proposes a powerful shadow mind that, unknown to its host, willfully influences the most minor thought and behavior. There is no scientific evidence of this sort of purposeful unconscious, nor is there evidence that psychotherapists have special methods for laying bare our out-of-awareness. See also Confabulation Imagination inflation Memory errors Misinformation effect Source-monitoring error References Memory