The New Science of Eyewitness Memory | John Wixted | TED
Eyewitness memory, while often perceived as unreliable, is a complex tool that, when understood and utilized correctly, can be crucial for justice. The conventional wisdom for decades has been that eyewitness testimony is inherently unreliable, leading to wrongful convictions. This perception is fueled by cases like Ronald Cotton's, where Jennifer Thompson confidently misidentified him as her attacker, resulting in an 11-year prison sentence before DNA evidence proved his innocence and identified Bobby Poole as the true culprit. Such DNA exoneration cases, numbering in the hundreds, highlight how confident yet mistaken identifications can lead to severe injustices.
Scientific research, particularly starting in the 1970s with Elizabeth Loftus, further cemented this view by demonstrating how easily memories can be manipulated and false memories implanted. Studies showed adults could be convinced they had been lost in a shopping mall as children or attacked by vicious animals, even if these events never occurred. These findings suggested that memories are not like video recordings but are more akin to contaminated crime scene evidence, easily distorted. This scientific evidence, combined with wrongful conviction cases, solidified the belief that the legal system should not trust eyewitness memory.
