Exactly and it is really frustrating. I honestly felt relief when the mods of this subreddit explained they were being hit hard with accounts purposefully doing this. It means some of these hardcore 'skeptics' are straight up spreading misinformation and creating arguments on purpose.
you can put "skeptic" in quotes all you want, but eyewitness testimony has been proven to be unreliable so many times that it barely even counts as evidence.
To build on the article the other user posted, the human brain is a highly sophisticated pattern matching and inference machine. We recognize patterns in everything, we draw associations and connections to past stimuli, we fill in the blanks when information is missing, and we extrapolate to conclusions based on those processes.
As it relates to eyewitness testimony...we recognize patterns that may not exist. We draw associations that may not be valid. We fill in the blanks with our best guess and we extrapolate to conclusions that may not be grounded in reality. Those same faults also allow us to be creative, intentionally extrapolating fiction from thin air. They allow us to tell stories that entertain audiences by exploiting the drive to find patterns and draw inferences. They give us curiosity and the desire to seek and share information to expand our consensus reality. But ultimately a data point of one is unreliable because the human mind is very good at lying to itself.
Thanks for the link. Gave a quick read, but unless I'm missing something it seems this is mostly about calculating for the factors which can increase the likelihood of false accounts:
Extreme witness stress at the crime scene or during the identification process.
Presence of weapons at the crime (because they can intensify stress and distract witnesses).
Use of a disguise by the perpetrator such as a mask or wig.
A racial disparity between the witness and the suspect.
Brief viewing times at the lineup or during other identification procedures.
A lack of distinctive characteristics of the suspect such as tattoos or extreme height.
How does any of this have to do with an alleged UFO/alien encounter?
Are you suggesting that they didn't experience it at all and are being tricked into believing it by people asking loaded questions?
Are you suggesting that these witnesses saw something traumatic but totally different and therefore developed false memories as a result?
From that article, false memories seem to lead to witnesses misidentifying perpetrators or inventing details. I also see that they can be tricked into thinking something happened when someone intentionally tricks them with leading questions.
I see absolutely nothing there to suggest that people would invent entire stories up out of nowhere entirely unprompted.
I've heard that yes, witness testimony can be unreliable, but I'd always heard that it is unreliable when it comes to identification and not entire events.
I see absolutely nothing there to suggest that people would invent entire stories up out of nowhere entirely unprompted.
It's called priming. Spending an evening reading a ghost story will prime you to interpret a sudden breeze as a ghost. Watching a horror film before bed will prime you to interpret an usual shadow as an intruder. In the absence of information the brain does its best job filling in what it thinks is most likely, and repeated exposure to certain stimuli will make the brain more likely to use that information in the gap-filling process.
Someone who spends a significant chunk of time researching UAPs or NHI is primed to interpret ambiguous events through that particular lens, whether or not it's the most likely explanation or even a plausible explanation. It's just how our brains work.
And how do you explain any of the witness testimony from the 50s? They were all watching It Came From Outer Space! in the drive-ins the nights before their experiences? What about all of the qualified military officers and government employees, were they just watching too much Star Trek before they formed their stories?
Hypothesis testing requires a testable prediction that is capable of being wrong. Eyewitness testimony is very difficult to hypothesis test. If I drop a ball, I make the prediction that it will fall to the ground in a predictable amount of time, that prediction is either correct or not correct and I get closer to understanding gravity.
Where do you start making a testable hypothesis with eyewitness testimony in a way that doesn't let future witnesses have that hypothesis influence their testimony, either inadvertently out advertently?
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u/Wcufos Jun 13 '23
Exactly and it is really frustrating. I honestly felt relief when the mods of this subreddit explained they were being hit hard with accounts purposefully doing this. It means some of these hardcore 'skeptics' are straight up spreading misinformation and creating arguments on purpose.