Why Science Tells Us Not to Rely on Eyewitness Accounts
scientificamerican.com
scientificamerican.com
1). It starts with [Science Tells US] and here see the first stupidity. Science doesn't tell us anything. It is the practitioners of scientific investigation who are telling us something based on their particular interpretations of the data.
This is a form of eye-witness testimony.
2) Any data collected in any event is never guaranteed to be accurate. We have to test the various processes repeatedly. An example here, which is known to be true. DNA evidence collected from a scene may be there becasue of many different reasons, including being accidentally brought in by an investigator or being contaminated later in the process.
3) Irrespective of variations in eye-witness account, you can obtain a reasonable view of the environment at the time of the incident. This is irrespective of the kind of incident, law or experimental.
4) Every eye-witness account is seeing the individual perspective and it is when they all match, that we then need to start asking questions (about collusion or otherwise). What is important to one witness is often unimportant to another and we should be expecting variation in testimony.
Here in Australia, decades ago, there was a series of advertisements highlighting the "big picture". What was telling about it was that, even with recorded incidents, if the records were too close, you couldn't see the "big picture" of what was happening.
There is a classic picture in one of the Melbourne papers of a policeman beating the living daylights out of a person. This officer was condemned and a call for his sacking and prosecution was made. This was headline news. A couple of days later, another reporter showed the actual picture (the big picture) and the calls for that policeman to be sacked was dropped as it showed a full-blown riot going on around him and he was defending himself from attack.
The upshot is that all evidence is required, eye-witness and circumstantial, if we are to be able to make fair decisions. Nothing is perfect (especially evidence) and we will make mistakes. But we do have to consider what is available to us.