There's active research into fake memories. Currently the assumption is that witness testimonials are somewhere between completely useless and actively harmful

There's active research into fake memories. Currently the assumption is that witness testimonials are somewhere between completely useless and actively harmful to justice. https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.htm https://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversky.h... > Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory.4 Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. So ... yeah. Our memory is pretty useless as far as determining facts goes.