JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: John Corbett on April 18, 2026, 09:33:08 PM
-
This article pretty much says it all:
https://legalclarity.org/what-percent-of-eyewitness-testimony-is-accurate/
The following paragraph echoes my thinking exactly:
"Human memory doesn’t work like a camera. When you recall an event, your brain reassembles fragments of what you saw, heard, and felt, filling in gaps with expectations, assumptions, and information you encountered afterward. This reconstructive process happens automatically, and the person doing the remembering usually has no idea it’s occurring. A witness who describes a vivid, detailed memory may be genuinely confident in every detail while being wrong about several of them."
The above paragraph reiterates some of the same points I've made numerous times in debating the JFKA online over the past 35 years. I have frequently said the human brain is not equipped with a DVR. We tend to remember bits and pieces of an event. We don't always put the pieces together accurately or in the right order. A witness who is confident is not always accurate.
Nothing an eye or earwitness says can, by itself, establish something as factual. When a witness gives an account, it might or might not be accurate. In most cases if the witness is trying to be truthful, and I think most witnesses are, they will get some things wrong and some things right. The trick is to figure out which is which and for that we need to turn to other forms of evidence to confirm or refute what a witness has said. If your beliefs are based primarily on what an eyewitness has said, those beliefs are on a very shaky foundation.