How Accurate is Eyewitness Testimony? (Conspiracy Buffs Take Notice!)

Social Science and Research Council of Canada ^ | 1/14/98 | Elizabeth Brimacombe

[Shooter 2.5]

I'm sure this has more to do with the testimonies of Flights 800 and 587 than is has to do with the JFK thread. I have always considered the JFK assassination as an easy read. All of the evidence is there if someone wants it. There is no unanswered questions that weren't already answered after 38 years.

What I would really like to know is why do people deliberately lie about incidences. What makes a person create a book or web site and knowingly put out false information such as the doctor who claimed that he was on the emergency room team. I was only a matter of days that they had the real doctors on talk shows explaining what a liar he was. Why on earth would a doctor ruin his reputation when he should have known that there were dozens of reports and witnesses still around that would tell the real story.

[Valin]

What I would really like to know is why do people deliberately lie about incidences. What makes a person create a book or web site and knowingly put out false information such as the doctor who claimed that he was on the emergency room team.

Some people have absolutly no life(and often for a very good reason). Or, I'm sure you know people who seem to think that the only way they can build themselves up is to tear someone else down.

[discostu]

Sorry but study after study says the only type of eyewitness testimony that has a good chance of accuracy is stuff the witnesses write down without having been asked any question. Any kind of question, no matter how seemingly innocuous runs the risk of changing the memories of the witnesses. In the 70s they did a study that was famous for a while and my psych 101 class did a mini-version of it. In this experiment we watched a video of an intersect just prior to and through a hit and run accident. Real time no slow mo, just like a person standing at that corner would see it. Then we were handed a paper with 5 questions on it about the accident. Only one sticks out in my mind but it sticks out because of how telling it was. The question was "did the pickup in the accident have a gun rack?". One person out of the 30 odd in my class (no not me) gave the correct answer: there was no pickup in the accident or even on screen during the video. 29 people, on reading that question had their memories changed (some insisted when we reviewed the video to check our answers that it was a different video) by one word in one question. And notice I used a very specific phrase that you memories change, they don't get skewed or led astray they actually change, what you remember before that one word goes into your brain is different than what you remember after and unless somebody shows you the video proof (which you might not believe, as demonstrated by my classmates) you'll never know.