Testimony is Evidence

[LadyForCamus]

Found it:





Mr. Fraser not only describes, in detail, what is wrong with witness testimony, he unwittingly demonstrates it. I found the video as linked from this article which points up some of the pros and cons, but seems to miss the biggest con, that witnesses may be mistaken or outright lying.

I'm going to quote myself from nine months ago, from the same thread where I initially posted the above link with it's video for further illustration of the point.

Human memory is too unreliable to trust, by itself, to come to a conclusion. Let me illustrate:
In 1998, I saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee win an Olympic medal at the summer games in New York City. That is, to the best of my knowledge, a statement of fact. It's what I remember. It never happened. New York City has never hosted the Olympic games. There were no summer games in 1998. Yet I clearly remember her winning an Olympic medal, in New York, in 1998.

It happens that it was the Goodwill games, which were indeed held in NYC in 1998. But, I only know that now because I just looked it up and had I been called upon before today to give testimony in a court of law whether Joyner-Kersee won an Olympic medal at the summer Olympic games in New York City, I would have sworn under oath that she did. It's likely that in the future I'll revert to that belief, forgetting once again that there ever were such a thing as the Goodwill games.

Moving beyond the fallibility of human memory, people can give horribly bad testimony even without faulty memories. Is the witness coerced? Is the witness even being honest? Is the witness a friend of the defendant or a foe? Is the witness being paid for their testimony? In short, does the witness have a motive to say what the prosecution (or the defense) wants them to say. These are just some of the things that should bar witness testimony from being the sole evidence to any conclusion.

I have to wonder if RR is simply immune to both testimonial evidence and physical evidence since his position hasn't budged an inch. Then again, I'm not emotionally invested in making testimony appear to be far better evidence than it actually is.

RR, let's get a clear answer for once. Why is testimony your pet hobby horse? You've been shown over and over again that it's unreliable, even from eye-witnesses, yet you cling to it like a drowning man clinging to a bit of flotsam.

Thanks for the interesting and informative video, GB.  I read a study recently on how reconstructive memory plays a role in people forgetting their babies and children in cars.  The human brain has a difficult time deviating from predictable routines.  So when, for example, dad is asked to bring baby to day care in the morning when it's usually mom's task, he may not only forget to perform the task, but his brain can actually create a false memory of completing it when he actually didn't.  So, dad remembers dropping baby off, and is none the wiser until eight or so hours later when the horrific truth is revealed.

I have heard about the WTC false memory from the Mandela Effect folk; of course they outrageously asssert that the fault line lies within reality its self, and not their memories.  Ironically, RR has, on several occasions, dismissed the relevancy of this phenomenon to his pet topic of eyewitness testimony.