How reliable are some eyewitnesses?

Now both sides of the 9/11 story saga use eyewitnesses as sources of evidence to prove a point that is critical to their campaign.

However, how reliable are eyewitnesses that report something that either hasn't been widely recorded (if at all) and that the media has been reinforcing?

For example, Joe A sees something happen and the media (TV and press) report numerously that this happened but there appears to be little video, photographic or audio evidence of it.

Is Joe A the victim of the power of suggestion?

The only reason I bring this up is my fascination with a British psychological illusionist called Derren Brown, (google video or youtube his name) who has several TV series broadcasted here in the UK.

On a personal level he shows how easy it is to completely suggest an idea to someone and make personal advantage of that suggestion without the person being subjected to any kind of hypnosis.

In a recent episode of his series "Trick or Treat" he walked around New York and tried paying for goods with blank pieces of paper. He managed to walk away with a $4500 piece of jewellery and a some fillets of sea bass! Only a immigrant hot dog seller didn't fall for it. In light of this could this also mean its easier to fool people of your own culture/race as well?

All eyewitnesses are unreliable... Ask a local detective about a simple local bar fight where there were 10 witnesses,... tehy ALL saw somethig different.

Memories can be "created, molded and implanted (no, not direct mind control)" by outside influence or the persons own brain. when your brain has a memory with a "hole" it fills it in with "something" that you will then believe to be the truth. wehter it is something you see on CNN, someone involved tells you or your brain just invents.

The human mind is fallible, malleable and unreliable.

Eyewitnesses suck for evidence and certainly can never be considered to be speaking fact.

Yes I understand your point of view but when an eyewitness can validate some other form of evidence such as CCTV recording then can they be thought of as being reliable?

For instance, lots of eyewitness reports were used to back up claim of the official story around the events of 7th July but there is little if any CCTV evidence to back them up. Are these eyewitnesses stooges or just manipulated members of the public?

Is there a correlation between the state and magnitude of distraction and your vulnerability to suggestion?

In relation to 9/11, how credible are witness reports of the Pentagon incident and Flight 93 and WTC7 which have little or no video evidence to substantiate them?



[edit on 30-4-2007 by uknumpty]

[edit on 30-4-2007 by uknumpty]

It is common experience that human memory may be unreliable to some degree, whether by failing to remember at all or by remembering incorrectly.

Our sense of identity, of who we are and what we have done, is tied to our memories, and it can be disturbing to have those challenged. Amnesia, Alzheimer's disease, and post-traumatic stress disorder (also known as “shell-shock”) provide examples of dramatic loss of memory, with devastating effects on the sufferer and those around them.

Memory is a complicated process, only partly understood; but research suggests that the qualities of a memory do not in and of themselves provide a reliable way to determine accuracy. For example, a vivid and detailed memory may be based upon inaccurate reconstruction of facts, or largely self-created impressions that appear to have actually occurred. Likewise, continuity of memory is no guarantee of truth, and disruption of memory is no guarantee of falsity. Finally, memory is believed to be a reconstructed phenomenon, and so it can often be strongly influenced by expectation (one's own or other people's), emotions, the implied beliefs of others, inappropriate interpretation, or desired outcome.

I am not sure if magnitude exaggerates the fallibility, but above the reference PTSD as a main cause...

The shockingly SMALL numbers of "eyewitnesses" and their unlikley stories and timing lead me to believe that many were plants...

Like this guy who knew the collapse mechanisms within an hour... Crap, can;t find the link fast, I believe he is in 9/11 mysteries wearing a Harley Davidson shirt proclaiming to news sources that " the steel had melted"... he went on and on... interesting guy.

I even believe the firemen have been "brainwased" to ao point... at first some of them were CERTAIN that they had heard demolition charges... now, you hear nothing. Convinced otherwise of threatened pensions? I don;t know, but eyewitness suck, unless, like you said, they are simply VALIDATING some hard, physical evidence. Even then, how do you know if they have an agenda?







[edit on 30-4-2007 by Pootie]

9/11 is the day of no evidence. No black boxes in NY, no footage of the plane and few photos of debris from the plane that hit the Pentagon, no visible debris from Flight 93 allegedly due to the peculiarities of where it crashed (a giant sandbox as it were). As Ultima points out, no FBI or NTB crime scene reports. They could be hiding embarassing facts, or just covering up routine facts of an extraoridinary incident for whatever reason. Maybe they like to see us squirm.

Understanding the fallibility of memory, clearly something happened in each case, and if people saw and reported it accurately, it's obviously wrong to disbelieve them for lack of corroboration. For example, at the Pentagon, dozens of eyewitnesses reported an American Airlines-painrted airliner on a flight path from the west crashing into, not over, the Pentagon. Multiple angles sw this, from north, west, south, and east. I could find only five witnesses who correctly cited a B757, but many others said 737, airliner, etc. Close enough for me in the heat of the moment.

Now the usual ignorance-embracing tack would be to ignore all this and insist that becuase we've seen no video (that we're willing to accept as undoctored), no official reports with a tail number IDd, not every single bit of debris has been shown, and the hole isn't big enough (no matter how many times they're shown it IS big enough) then a B757 DID NOT hit the Pentagon, and all those people must be liars.

This is not skepticism, it's self-delusion. Take solitary unsubstantited accounts with a grain of salt, obviously. But I say use eyewitness reports when they have corroboration in other witness accounts or the physical evidence.

The problem with the witnesses at the Pentagon is that you had some that admitted they didnot know what hit the Pentagon they were told later it was a 757.

Originally posted by uknumpty

For example, Joe A sees something happen and the media (TV and press) report numerously that this happened but there appears to be little video, photographic or audio evidence of it.

Is Joe A the victim of the power of suggestion?

It depends on how far eyewitnesses go.

Becoming famous on an event, you need to tell more than what you seen. Or else, you will become same as others, who seen everything, too.

Reliability of an eyewitness applies only to the moment, day of the event, not to months, years after something happened.