Real World Example
A real world example of the telescoping effect is the case of Ferdi Elsas, an infamous kidnapper and murderer in the Netherlands. When he was let out of prison, most of the general population did not believe he had been in prison long enough. Due to forward telescoping, people thought Ferdi Elsas’ sentence started more recently than it actually did. Telescoping has important real world applications, especially in survey research. Marketing firms often use surveys to ask when consumers last bought a product, and government agencies often use surveys to discover information about drug abuse or about victimology. Telescoping may bias answers to these questions.
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