{"id":48410,"date":"2011-09-02T15:19:58","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T19:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/?p=48410"},"modified":"2017-11-03T14:27:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-03T18:27:57","slug":"new-york-times-invites-douglass-commentary-on-wrongful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2011\/09\/02\/new-york-times-invites-douglass-commentary-on-wrongful\/","title":{"rendered":"New York Times invites Douglass&#039; commentary on eyewitness reliability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For its &#8220;Room for Debate&#8221; feature, <em>The New York Times<\/em> invites several leading scholars, including Associate Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass, to discuss eyewitness reliability, or rather the growing evidence that the recollections of crime witnesses are anything but reliable.<\/p>\n<p><a href='https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/09\/spring201-crime-seen-feature.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"235\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2011\/09\/spring201-crime-seen-feature-235x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium alignright\" alt=\"spring201-crime-seen-feature\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <em>Times<\/em> framed the discussion by noting that the Supreme Court of New Jersey <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/08\/25\/nyregion\/in-new-jersey-rules-changed-on-witness-ids.html\">recently issued a ruling last week<\/a> telling judges to proceed with caution when a case hinges on a witness\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2011\/08\/31\/can-we-trust-eyewitness-identifications\/preventing-wrongful-arrests\">In her contribution, <\/a>Douglass writes that &#8220;in making these recommendations, the court relied on decades of  psychological research on eyewitness identifications. Some of this  research has uncovered elegantly simple techniques for reducing  eyewitness errors. For example, simply telling an eyewitness that the  culprit may or may not be in the lineup dramatically reduces  eyewitnesses\u2019 tendency to choose an innocent suspect&#8230;. The next logical step is to improve police procedures using  science-based recommendations to avoid even prosecuting innocent  suspects.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A recent <a href=\"http:\/\/home.bates.edu\/views\/2010\/04\/21\/crime-seen\/\"><em>Bates Magazine<\/em> article looks at Douglass&#8217; research<\/a>, which has been supported by a   $129,000 National Science Foundation Grant. Specifically, she&#8217;s delving into the   investigator-eyewitness relationship, including how a  crime investigator\u2019s feedback affects testimony.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat happens to an  eyewitness\u2019 recall when you say, \u2018You\u2019re doing a really good job\u2019?\u201d Douglass explains in the story by Virginia Wright. \u201cThe witness may think, \u2018I have a good memory \u2014 they  told me so \u2014 so I\u2019m going to tell them everything I can because it must  be right.\u2019 We\u2019re trying to understand how feedback changes what they  choose to report.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/roomfordebate\/2011\/08\/31\/can-we-trust-eyewitness-identifications\/preventing-wrongful-arrests\">View story from <em>The New York Times<\/em>, Sept. 1, 2011.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For its &#8220;Room for Debate&#8221; feature, The New York Times invites several&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[4,11011],"tags":[7227,11055],"class_list":["post-48410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-life","category-awards","tag-psychology","tag-student-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86253,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48410\/revisions\/86253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}