[6] This initial group was composed of academics and professionals and the organization sought out researchers in the fields of memory and clinical practice to form its advisory board.
[7] Mike Stanton in the Columbia Journalism Review stated that the FMSF "helped revolutionize the way the press and the public view one of the angriest debates in America—whether an adult can suddenly remember long-forgotten childhood abuse".
The parents decided to form the organization False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) out of their home in Center City Philadelphia.
Initially, the Foundation sought to document the phenomena of false memories, provide support to parents accused by their adult children, and to raise awareness in the media.
A study showed that in 1991 prior to the group's foundation, of the stories about abuse in several popular press outlets "more than 80 percent of the coverage was weighted toward stories of survivors, with recovered memory taken for granted and questionable therapy virtually ignored" but that three years later "more than 80 percent of the coverage focused on false accusations, often involving supposedly false memory" which the author of the study, Katherine Beckett, attributed to FMSF.
[18] Responding to this criticism the Foundation stated, "Is it not 'harmful to feminism to portray women as having minds closed to scientific information and as being satisfied with sloppy, inaccurate statistics?
[3] The claims made by the FMSF for the incidence and prevalence of false memories have been criticized as lacking evidence and disseminating alleged inaccurate statistics about the problem.
[18][22] Astrophysicist and astrobiologist Carl Sagan cited material from a 1995 issue of the FMS Newsletter in his critique of the recovered memory claims of UFO abductees and those purporting to be victims of Satanic ritual abuse in his last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.