
Eyewitness Memory Is a Lot More Reliable Than You Think - DamonHD
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eyewitness-memory-is-a-lot-more-reliable-than-you-think/?WT.mc_id=SA_TW_MB_NEWS&sf88257361=1
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teddyh
The article is good but the title is false. Eyewitness testimony is, as a
rule, always filtered through layers of perception contaminated by various
unchecked influences, which is largely the point of the article. The fact that
_properly isolated_ witness testimony is surprisingly reliable has no
practical benefit for anyone, since, in practice, no witness testimonies are
properly isolated.

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MarkMc
> no witness testimonies are properly isolated.

Can't we _make_ them properly isolated?

The article says you need 3 things for reliable witness testimony: 1. Do not
repeat the lineup, 2. Ensure the suspect doesn't stand out, 3. Record the
confidence of the witness when identifying the suspect.

If law enforcement follow these 3 rules _and_ the witness identifies the
suspect with a high degree of confidence, it seems the identification is very
reliable. That would be a practical benefit.

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microcolonel
The witness is also susceptible to suggestion. If they are reached over the
telephone, or have a conversation with a family member, or the police
accidentally (or intentionally) suggest something in an interview, then they
are tainted.

If the defendant is resourceful, then the chance of any of these happening
blows up.

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Theodores
This gets complicated at public events where something goes wrong and the
reported story is not consistent with the facts. Bystanders can witness the
event with their own eyes and then go home to watch the news, to then believe
the news-worthy version of the event. A spiral of silence sets in so all
observers of the original event fall under the same spell and assume they are
wrong and adjust their view to the world view rather than what they saw with
their own eyes.

At public events you also get a completely different view of what happened
depending on whom you ask. Not everyone gets the complete story or picks up on
all the clues. People bring their own expectations of what they expect to see
and have cognitive dissonance to make it so they do see what they see and not
necessarily what happened.

The JFK incident was in this realm of unreliable eyewitness memory, those that
thought they saw and heard the second shooter changed their view over time to
align with the accepted story. This is how it works.

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olliej
I few people have already commented on needing to properly isolate the
memories, and how difficult it is, and a few others have said that’s better
than nothing (and I agree replacing the officers who know which is the suspect
in a line up with those who don’t is a basic but massive improvement).

The problem is how easy /accidental/ compromise is, even if you’re trying to
avoid it. Just imagine you reading back their testimony to verify it is
correct and misspeaking, that is enough.

That said the wonders of CSI, etc have gone a long way to over represent the
fallibility of people and to over promise the capability of
science/equipment/magic.

#MakingGUIinVBtoBacktrackTheKillersIP

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mannykannot
Given the title, the article presents little evidence as to the achievable
reliability of eyewitness memory. The closest it comes is the experimental
result that identification by eyewitness is 97% accurate in those cases where
the witness is very confident of the identification. I am skeptical as to
whether witnesses to actual crimes would accurately estimate their confidence
level in actual line-ups.

Nevertheless, the suggested reforms are well-argued and seem to be sensible.

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tzs
A problem with lineups may be that memory is _too_ good. There is an
experiment that has been done several times that shows how surprisingly good
our memories can be in some ways.

The experiment is to show someone a very large number of images or normal
things, showing them each image for a short time. The images might be things
like 5 apples on a table, a man petting a dog, a couple of people talking, and
that kind of thing...just normal things you might see every day.

Then later, sometimes days later in some versions of the experiment, you show
those people _pairs_ of images, where one of the images was from the set they
were shown earlier, and one is not. You then ask them which of the two images
they have seen before.

This has been done with sets as large as 10000 images, and people get 80% or
more correct two days later [1]. There was a version where in the
identification portion the two images shown were one from the set they had
seen earlier and one that was similar. Examples might be a stack of $1 bills
and a stack of $5 bills, or a bell with a narrow handle and a bell with a wide
handle. Even with these similar images people did well. The one I've seen
discussed used 2500 images and 2500 similar images, and people got 90% correct
[2]. That particular one tested shortly after the people were shown the
images.

I wonder if this works when instead of the recall test being one image you
have seen before against one that you have not, it is one you have seen
against several you have not?

And I wonder if it works when it is something live you are seeing instead of
images?

And how important is it that when shown the initial set of images people know
they are being shown images and are going to later undergo some kind of test
involving them?

If the answers to these three questions are "it still works", "it still
works", and "not important", then it suggests lineups may be inherently
problematic. In the course of an ordinary day in city most people are exposed
at least briefly to a large number of strangers.

If a witness only got a brief look at a criminal, and then is shown a lineup
that contains a suspect that is _not_ the correct criminal but _is_ someone
that the witness happened to see a few days ago out and about in the city
without thinking about it, is there a high chance that person will be picked
in the lineup?

It seems that with human memory, three things are true. (1) We actually
remember a _lot_ more than we think we do, (2) we are not very good at
accurately consciously recalling it, and (3) when we recall it we may
unconsciously update the memory to better match the inaccurate version we
recalled.

Unfortunately most use of memory as evidence depends on accurate conscious
recall, and requires the witness to recall it multiple times between the
events witnessed and their testimony at trial, giving many opportunities to
mutate the memory to match the prosecutor's narrative.

If I am ever on a jury I am going to greatly discount eyewitness testimony
unless the side the testimony is for explains what steps they took to address
these problems.

[1] Lionel Standing (1973), "Learning 10,000 Pictures", Quarterly Journal of
Experimental Psychology 25, 207–22.

[2] Timothy F. Brady, Talia Konkle, et al. (2008), “Visual Long-Term Memory
Has a Massive Storage Capacity for Object Details,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 38, 14325–29.

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ThomPete
The problem still stands. You can't really rely on it to convince someone
wrongly.

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mythrwy
How does scientificamerican.com know how reliable I think eyewitness accounts
are?

Why do people and publishers use that line? It can't be accurate and I find it
presumptuous and offensive. It's a form of emotional click bait. "You don't
want to be wrong about something do you?? Click Here!"

A nice calm "a lot more reliably than commonly believed" would be better.

