Please don't cling to all eye-witness statements

[cthulu2016]

I have seen (on local TV feed) any number of eye-witnesses talking to reporters.

They described how a car dropped off multiple shooters, how the shooters took 15+ children hostage, etc..

They were smart, decent and honest people who were, for the most part, offering their conclusions implied by their "piece of the elephant," or reporting things as if from experience that were actually things they had heard other people say. They were piecing together broad assumptions from narrow personal experience.

(The man who described the car dropping off multiple shooters in a way that sound like he had seen it then clarified that was what he understood to be the case... that it was what people were saying, not what he had seen.)

Almost all eye-witness accounts are like this. Individual eye-witnesses are very unreliable. This is as well-established scientifically and historically as one could want. This is something everyone knows but that very few of us believe. (Including me. I know enough to be skeptical of others, but do tend to believe my own eye-witness perceptions... until better evidence comes along. Which it sometimes does.

Did someone force a large group of women and children into a locked room? Yes. People at the Sikh temple did, for their safety. To someone else, did hearing that the children were being held in the kitchen imply a hostage taking? Yes.

Were there multiple shooters? Yes. But one of them was a policeman. People did hear a lot of shots out in the parking lot... too many for one shooter.

Usually, after the investigation starts the story changes. This is not always because the police are promulgating a big lie. (Sometimes it is, but that is not a sensible default assumption.) The investigators progressively winnow out witness stories that are contradicted by everyone else, or contradicted by the physical evidence.

All dramatic events like this have some first blush elements that quickly evaporate. Always.

[Scuba]

1. Eye witnesses are reliably unreliable.

[Drunken Irishman]

2. Right. It's why eyewitness testimony is often unreliable during a trial.

And becoming more and more scrutinized by legal experts. You just can't trust someone, even if they did see it happen. Not that they're lying, because I don't think they are, but because they can see things differently than what is really happening.

[cali]

3. I'm so glad you posted this op

you couldn't be more on point. rec

[scarletwoman]

4. Good post. K&R

[Lone_Star_Dem]

5. Part of the problem here is we have terrified family repeating text messages

Which were sent to them by terrified victims of this event hiding inside.

For example: There was one person who said today the visiting priest from New Delhi shot a gunman. It later came out that in reality what happened is the visiting priest was shot by the gunman. People were in shock and passing along second and third hand information. It's understandable some mistakes were made.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. The BBC did a fascinating programme about eye-witness reliability

in which some volunteers, who had been doing some simple tests, were taken to lunch as a pub, where actors played out a stabbing with none of the volunteers being told it wasn't real, and then being interviewed by the police (either still serving, or just retired, I can't remember) before the were told. There was a lot of disagreement and mistakes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/crimewatch/support/eyewitness.shtml

(swearing on this soundtrack, so don't play it at work)

[Lone_Star_Dem]

7. To complicate this situation more, a lot of these reports are second and third hand.

There's a massive amount of pure speculation and hysterical rumor being passed off as eyewitness accounts.

Beyond that, that's a fascinating video. Thanks for sharing it with us.

[flamingdem]

8. K&R

[jeff47]

9. In the classic example, "what color was the barn?"

They show a group of people a film of a car as it drives down the road. The film ends with an accident. They then pass out a paper with a bunch of questions about the film and the accident.

One of the questions was "What color was the barn?" The majority answered "red".

There was no barn in the film.

[cthulu2016]

10. Another barn example

The ultimate skeptical/cautious position.

"What color is that barn?"

"The side facing me is red."

[SheilaT]

11. The vast majority of us are not as observant as we think we are.

I'm currently reading Fooling Houdini by Alex Stone and he talks about how magicians can fool people by fairly simple distractions. He references The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons. It is quit astonishing what we don't notice, especially when we are distracted.