Witness Evidence

[robvalue]

Also, keep in mind the kind of people you're interacting with here. You're not talking to naive illiterates who are easily impressed by good rhetoric. So whatever it is you're about to post soon, it better be really worth considering.

Good point. I don't know what theists are generally trying to achieve on this forum (the ones that don't actually interact outside of religious debate) but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with changing our opinions.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Thank you again, for your responses (I do appreciate thougthful responses for consideration).  As I said previously, I will review the studies provided, and provide some comments about them (this will take a few days).  I'm also fighting my first inclination for some of the posts, so I'm holding off saying too much for a day or so.

But in the meantime; here is a letter written to a blog where some similar discussions where going on.
http://randalrauser.com/2013/12/rd-miksa...testimony/

I am writing you today because as a regular “lurker” at your blog, I was dismayed at certain comments posted recently in reply to your blog posts concerning the topic of eye-witness reliability and the evidentiary value of eye-witness testimony. As an individual who has worked for most of his professional life in real-life fields that depend heavily on eye-witness testimony and which make serious decisions based on such testimony (Intelligence and Policing), I was indeed shocked at the generally poor understanding and misconceptions that many of your commentators expressed when they were discussing the issue of eye-witness testimony.

when discussing the issue of eye-witness testimony in a legal context—made the claim that we very often hear that scientific evidence, in the form of forensic evidence such as DNA, overturns eye-witness testimony. Indeed, the commentator then seemed to infer that courts thus favor scientific evidence over testimonial evidence in many instances. And yet this claim is not only mistaken as a general principle, but it fails to take into account the vastly greatly number of times that eye-witness testimony overrules scientific evidence in a legal setting.

To understand why, we first have to understand that eye-witness testimony, while still remaining eye-witness testimony, varies greatly in terms of quality. For example, there is a big difference in the quality of eye-witness testimony between 1) a group of people who see, at night and in a poorly lit area, an unknown man stabbing another unknown man when compared to 2) a group of people who walk in on a family friend, whom they have known for twenty-years, stabbing his wife (who they also know) in the well-lit living room of his house. Obviously, the eye-witness testimony in the latter case is of better quality than in the former case, and yet in both cases it is still eye-witness testimony.

Yet what this means is that while a court may assess forensic evidence of a certain sort to be sufficient to establish reasonable doubt in the eye-witness testimony in the first case, it would never do so in the latter case. Indeed, if, for example, it was somehow discovered that the fingerprints of the family friend were not on the knife that was used to stab his wife, but rather that the fingerprints of another man were on the knife, do you think that that fact would in any way be sufficient to override the eye-witness testimony provided of the murder by the group of people that walked in on him as he was stabbing his wife in the living room? Of course not. This strange forensic fact would simply be viewed as one of the anomalies that sometimes occurs with forensic evidence in criminal cases. But it would never be sufficient, in and of itself, to create reasonable doubt in the face of the eye-witness testimony provided by a group of people who clearly saw a family friend murder his wife.

More examples in the article...

While not as critical (as policing /intelligence)  in my occupation working with machine controls, I do find myself relying on the observations of others, to help me find the cause of the issue. I also rely on my own observation of what I see and hear quite often as well.   So my own experience doesn't match with what some infer as to the reliability of testimony.

Bold emphasis my own.

False (more usually, mistaken) eyewitness testimony does often overrule scientific evidence in a courtroom setting.  It is one of the primary causes of false convictions, which are later overturned. If you really want me to (I'm trying to avoid copypasta) show you, there are numerous experiments that have been done that show even the most clear-cut cases of eyewitness testimony can be falsified and/or manipulated. Juries tend to believe eyewitness stories because of how the human brain works; the "courtroom setting" is exactly the problem, and is not evidence of the reliability of eyewitness testimony, only of the fact that humans rely on it far too heavily. 

Even in your "strong" example of the "I saw my friend kill my wife" testimony, there are a half-dozen reasons that immediately spring to mind which could be a reason the husband is giving false/misleading testimony about what he thinks he saw. (Especially given the emotional trauma of losing one's wife.) We know for a fact that many people have been wrongly executed, based on "good eyewitness testimony" and circumstantial evidence, specifically because scientific testing later proved them to be innocent. If you examine only one website, check this one out:
http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocenc...th-penalty

[Edwardo Piet]

Indeed Rob: Scientific evidence is the strongest kind of evidence around, regardless of whether it's a legal setting or not

[robvalue]

Exactly.

Just because a certain kind/strength of evidence has been accepted in court at some point, that doesn't mean it was the right decision to be accepted.

[Edwardo Piet]

When the scientific evidence isn't available they're just kind of desperate to get at the truth basically.

But it is innocent until "proven" guilty and there's no proof in court because there isn't even any proof in science.

Sure letting a serious criminal go free would be horrible, but wrongly convicting an innocent person for several decades isn't exactly great either.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

When the scientific evidence isn't available they're just kind of desperate to get at the truth basically.

But it is innocent until "proven" guilty and there's no proof in court because there isn't even any proof in science.

Sure letting a serious criminal go free would be horrible, but wrongly convicting an innocent person for several decades isn't exactly great either.

With respect, Evie, I think you have that backward. (But to your defense, so do our courts.)

Sure wrongly convicting an innocent person would be horrible, but letting a serious criminal go free isn't exactly great either.

A murderer who is not convicted is, to me, almost infinitely better than convicting an innocent person. 

It does bother me when those who are adoring of authority point to the courts as their example of, "See? This would be evidence in court!" I always refer them to Ambrose Bierce:

INADMISSIBLE, adj. 

Not competent to be considered. Said of certain kinds of testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with, and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves alone. Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are daily undertaken on hearsay evidence. There is no religion in the world that has any other basis than hearsay evidence. Revelation is hearsay evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the testimony of men long dead whose identity is not clearly established and who are not known to have been sworn in any sense. Under the rules of evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law. It cannot be proved that the battle of Blenheim ever was fought, that there was such as person as Julius Caesar, such an empire as Assyria.

     But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.

[Edwardo Piet]

A murderer who is not convicted is, to me, almost infinitely better than convicting an innocent person. 

I completely agree. My second statement was meant to be a massive understatement. Sorry that wasn't clear.
By "not exactly great" I meant "too fucking horrific for words".

[RoadRunner79]

I understand the idea of not confusing the current discussion, but a single line outlining the actual point of having the discussion in the first place is surely not too much to ask. Is it? If there is ever another genuine reason, I'd be interested to hear it.

He has stated, perhaps in his other nearly identical thread, that the purpose of all this is to undermine the theory of evolution by show how those against religious positions engage in the same (lack of) logic as they accuse religious folk of: reliance on unverified testimony, a bias toward hunch rather than proper evidence, etc.

In other words, he's trying to move the goalposts and lower the bar to such a degree that evolution must be discarded and religious ideas must be seriously considered.

Actually I was mostly joking.... Sometimes I try to use these arguments with the same criteria and often pick evolution, because it really gets those who advocate scientism going.   Evolution is extraordinary, and hasn't met the extraordinary requirements for evidence....  The I just go to saying that there is no evidence at all and they are just stories.....   Think about it... how much of this science have you personally experienced.  Or are you believing the stories written down in books. Do you know that anyone is actually doing these experiments, or just a bunch of people writing books, and collecting a paycheck.    The advantages of this, is you really don't have to know anything about the subject, and it doesn't require much research.  You cannot really reason with these arguments because they are not based on anything objective. 

However most people don't realize when I'm done that you can make these arguments against anything you choose not to believe.   If something goes against your beliefs, you just turn the hyper-skepticism on, and go at it.  You go to modernism where everything has to be absolutely certain.  Except when it turns back to your own beliefs, and then you remember that little can be absolutely certain. 

It's not normally effective, but it sometimes is fun.   However, I don't really believe the arguments, so I can't keep it up for very long.

[RoadRunner79]

My wife is convinced that we heard a bomb at a Metro station from a terrorist attack when we were on honey moon in Paris, we didn't, we only learnt about it when we got home and saw the papers but her memory has become muddled over time. Memory is like that, half the stuff you remember is probably wrong.

How do you know, that you did not hear it.... did you think that you heard something before you saw it on the news?

[RoadRunner79]

One more tip, and this isn't meant to be insulting, it applies to everyone: don't assume you must be right. That way leads to terrible arguments and twisting of evidence. Instead, have an open mind to all possibilities and see where sound logic applied to proper evidence leads you. It's only by using this method that I've discovered the times I have been completely wrong myself.

Check your assumptions. This is often where the problems can start. A false or unsupported assumption poisons the whole affair. Those in search of truth should try to make as few assumptions as possible.

Yes, and I agree that it applies to everyone.   And despite the many assumptions and people who took a little information and invent an entire story about it (concerning my posts).   This is the reason, that I started this thread and the one on Extraordinary Evidence.  It's why I also avoided any of those who attempted to make them into a theology discussion.   I am interested in discussing these arguments, not the results from them.

I think my mind naturally works based on principles.  You may find, that I end up questioning the principle or going to the reasons for the assertion, rather than the details themselves first, then I apply the specifics to the principle. I do self reflect quite a bit, and also notice patterns and the different ways of that others discuss and think.   How is the thinking is different, not just the conclusion (what are their methods)?