4 ms·
> rely solely on witness testimony. Bad part about that - even today - is that we know for a fact that what people remember/recall isn't necessarily what actua
by cr0sh 7y ago
> rely solely on witness testimony.
Bad part about that - even today - is that we know for a fact that what people remember/recall isn't necessarily what actually occurred. Also, as time goes on, those recollections can become more unreliable.
We know that the mind confabulates, making things up to fill in gaps - both at the time something occurs, and after the fact to "fill in the story".
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/starklab/false-memory-eyewitness-testimony/ https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/starklab/false-memory-eyewitne...
Unfortunately, the legal system has been slow in acknowledging this - on top of so many other things found and/or known to be false or bias - two big ones are so-called "lie detector" systems, and "blood spatter analysis".
Fortunately, lie detector "evidence" is generally not admissible in the United States (at least I think for criminal cases?) - but blood spatter analysis is still considered to be a "real science", when it may be anything but:
https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/blood-spatter-criminal-justice-courts-forensic-evidence/ https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter/blood-spatter-...