Objective readers are encouraged to compare the following with your wacky "analysis".
Newsday
Brain Often Blurs What Eyes See
By Earl Lane
Washington Bureau
Washington - As investigators have sifted dozens of eyewitness accounts of the destruction of TWA Flight 800, they have had to keep in mind a growing scientific literature on the fallibility of first-hand descriptions.
In the immediate aftermath of the July 17 disaster, FBI agents interviewed several hundred people who had claimed to see the breakup of the airliner.
Some of them also described streaks of light, suggesting the possibility of a missile attack on the doomed plane.
But specialists say eyewitness accounts - no matter how credible those giving them - can be distressingly unreliable, particularly those gathered days after the fact.
"In general, memory researchers recommend that the most fruitful interview is the first interview,'' said Stephen Ceci, a Cornell University psychologist.
"And that's if the person hasn't been tainted or biased in some way by being given a theory or expectancy by the media or the interviewer or a friend.''
In highly publicized incidents such as the TWA crash, investigators must be especially wary, Ceci said, since there is so much information - and misinformation - available from media reports and word-of-mouth.
A law enforcement source familar with the TWA investigation said FBI agents use interview methods intended to assess the consistency and reliability of witness accounts. They look for any signs that the witnesses may be repeating news accounts or seeking to give interviewers what they believe they want to hear.
"There is a science to interviewing people,'' the source said.
But even witnesses who have been carefully interviewed and are reporting what they sincerely believe they saw can make mistakes, Ceci said.
"There is not a snapshot in the brain of that fireball in the sky or a streak of light prior to the explosion,'' he said.
Memories are stored in neurons distributed throughout the brain, he said, and the information stored in those brain cells "must be rounded up and put back together to tell a story . . . many things can go wrong in reconstructing it.''
Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist who has written extensively about eyewitness testimony, said people tend to fill in gaps in their recollection with information they get from other sources.
"I don't mean to belittle the crash witnesses,'' Loftus said. But in some cases, particularly traumatic events, the perceived memories can be both vivid and incorrect. "People have claimed to see things a lot more bizarre than flashes of light,'' Loftus said.
Loftus has studied accounts of serious auto accidents. "You have cases where a witness says the blue car was traveling south and the yellow car was traveling north,'' Loftus said, and the witness will stick to that account even after it has been proved that just the opposite was the case.
There are ways to improve the reliability of accounts, Loftus said. "Some banks train tellers in anticipation of a bank robbery,'' she said. "You are to sit down, don't talk to anybody else and write out your own version of the event.'' Loftus said that professional training or expertise can affect the reliability of eyewitness accounts. She has done experiments in which she shows arson investigators a video of a fire scene, with fire officials giving orders to their personnel on how to fight the blaze. The arson investigators remember how many hose teams the chief is ordering into the building and other details that untrained viewers disregard, Loftus said.
But experts caution that trained professionals also can make mistakes. Howard Egeth, head of the psychology department at Johns Hopkins University, said studies have found that police officers often do no better than lay persons when trying to identify suspects.
And even when witness testimony is carefully couched, it can be misinterpreted by others.
Investigators in the TWA case have been interested in the accounts of National Guard air crews who were doing search-and-rescue training on the night of the disaster. One pilot reported seeing a "streak of light'' on the same trajectory as a shooting star. His remark was viewed by some as supporting the missile scenario.
But the pilot, a Vietnam veteran who has seen missiles fired in combat, dismissed that notion. He said the orange-red streak was descending across the sky and, as he followed it, eventually erupted into the large fireball described by other witnesses.
Experts also say it is understandable why some witnesses hold strongly to their accounts even as contradictory information comes to light.
As Loftus and a co-author have written, "We want to believe . . . that our minds work in an orderly, efficient way, taking in information, sorting it, filing it, and calling it back later in full and vivid detail. In a chaotic world, where so much is out of control, we need to believe that our minds, at least, are under our command.''
Al Baker contributed to this story.
[emphasis added]
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This article from the September 1, 1996 Newsday was part of the astounding coordinated effort to disparage and impeach ALL of the eyewitnesses to TWA-800. To believe this, NOTHING reported by a witness can be at all reliable in any way.
The true method of evaluation of eyewitnesses is to compare and contrast the various reports... not to totally discount everything stated and ignore the qualifications and training of those who are making the reports. ALL observations are filtered through the mind of the observer... and initial reports are best for raw data, however INTERPRETATION of that data requires input from other sources.
Now, let's look at your introduction to the article and see how you are less interested in presenting an objective discussion than you are in attacking anyone who disagrees with you. You said:
You've given a classic example of "shootdown" tinfoil hat blabberbabble on a subject you know NOTHING about.
Expert - "A person with a high degree of skill in or knowledge of a certain subject.
Objective readers are encouraged to compare the following with your wacky "analysis".
Your introduction is filled with "loaded" words... all designed to attack your oponents and are therefor ad hominem" argumental fallacies. They are intended to insult the person you are addressing and prejudice the idle reader against anything they may say.
YOU have no information at all about my background or fields of expertise... yet you, based on some articles in the popular press, call a well thought out analysis and opinion "tinfoil hat blabberbabble" and "wacky." It is neither.
Our system of justice DOES NOT RELY on experts. It relies on the judgement of ordinary people, weighing and evaluating the evidence presented which may include the OPINIONS of experts. In the case of TWA-800, the testimony, the evidence, offered by hundreds of eyewitnesses, regardless of its probitive value, was systematically distorted, devalued, obfuscated, and finally, uniquely, BANNED from presentation before the probitive panel effectively preventing that panel from evaluating and weighing that evidence. Instead, they were given an "expert's" opinion and interpretation of that testimony that in most, if not all, instances was FALSE TO FACT and was based soley on what THIRD PARTY interviewers recalled of the statements sometime after the interview! The FBI 302 system does not lend itself to accurate reporting... it relies on the memories of the FBI agents as to what the witness reports. The NTSB was then presented with an "expert's" recollection of what the FBI agents wrote down of what they recalled the witnesses said instead of hearing what the witnesses have to say themselves. Absurd.
You continually present yourself as an "expert" on this case... I suggest that there is another definition of "expert" that fits:
Expert - "An unknown drip under pressure."