2013年7月15日星期一

Eyewitness testimony alone

In any sort of legal dispute, if you're the prosecutor, it's good to have documents - a paper trail - fingerprints, video camera footage, someone caught red-handed in the act or with the goods, as well as a documented trilogy of available time, substantive motive and ample opportunity against the alleged perpetrator. But sometimes all you have to base your case on is the observation of a witness or witnesses. That's often been enough, even more than enough, to either convict someone or provide and substantiate that someone with a legal alibi. Eyewitness testimony alone, well it's not perfect but it's not something inadmissible in court either.

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While documents, including pictographs, rock carvings/paintings, hieroglyphs and related archaeological relics, including human remains; films and photographs too, are all excellent means to document history, an awful lot of what we accept as historical gospel comes from what someone or a group of people have witnessed, especially in the days before sound recordings and film. Then too many a document is nothing more than the recorded word of an eyewitness; an observer(s).

Lastly, you couldn't last or survive a day without your powers of observation being accurate and reliable. If your vision was unreliable or faulty, could you drive to work? You'd better know a red light when you see one, and exercise superb judgment based of your observations if thinking about overtaking and passing another vehicle. Ditto if you cross a busy street. You'd better be spot-on in your observation if approaching a down staircase. You'd better be able to observe and tell the difference when meeting up with a bear or a deer in the woods if you intend to pet it. Your ability to observe and report accurately (if only to yourself) those observations are absolutely critical to your survival.

You probably tell lots of people every week events that you observed and many people no doubt relate to you things they have witnessed. Nobody bats an eyebrow - nobody questions anyone's bona fides. Expect of course when its something that expert authorities, professional skeptics included, say cannot be. Then eyebrows get raised.

Issue number one: If 99.99% of what you observe is accurate, believable, a no-brainer in terms of credibility, then why are you all of a sudden an unreliable witness if you observe something others, so-called expert others, dismiss as an impossible anomaly?

Issue number two: So-called, and really-real experts can indeed dismiss an impossible anomaly, witnesses be damned, if it is indeed an impossibility by the science of the day.

Issue number three: We have a contradiction between theory (what the experts say) and observation (what the witness sees)

On the one hand, throughout history, there's been many an observation of something anomalous and considered downright impossible, according to the skeptics, that's now part and parcel of the standard norm, like meteorites - stone that fall from the sky. Score points for the observer.

On the other hand, how many observations have been credited as legit though later found to be less than credible. Score points for the skeptic.