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a-8-08.opn.html
published articles in psychology literature containing the words “eyewitness”
and “identity” in their abstracts. By contrast, the Special Master estimated that
more than two thousand studies related to eyewitness identification have been
published in the past thirty years.
Some recent studies have successfully gathered real-world data from
actual police identification procedures. See, e.g., Behrman & Davey, supra;
Valentine et al., supra. But most eyewitness identification research is conducted
through controlled lab experiments. Unlike analyses of real-world data,
experimental studies allow researchers to control and isolate variables. If an
experiment is designed well, scientists can then draw relevant conclusions from
different conditions.
There have been two principal methods of conducting eyewitness lab
research. In some experiments, eyewitnesses have been shown staged events
without knowing they were witnessing something artificial. See, e.g., Krafka &
Penrod, supra. In other studies, witnesses generally knew they were
participating in an experiment from the outset. See e.g., Lynn Garrioch & C.A.
Elizabeth Brimacombe, Lineup Administrators’ Expectations: Their Impact on
Eyewitness Confidence, 25 Law & Hum. Behav. 299 (2001). Most experiments
manipulate variables, like the witness’ and suspect’s race, for example, and use
target-present and target-absent lineups to test the effect the variable has on
accuracy. (The scientific literature often uses the term “lineup” to refer to live
lineups and/or photo arrays; we sometimes use the word interchangeably as
well.)
Authoritative researchers generally present the results of their
experiments in peer-reviewed psychology journals. “The peer review process is
a method of quality control that ensures the validity and reliability of
experimental research.” Roy S. Malpass et al., The Need for Expert
Psychological Testimony on Eyewitness Identification, in Expert Testimony on
the Psychology of Eyewitness Identification 3, 14 (Brian L. Cutler ed., 2009).
The process is designed to ensure that studies “have passed a rigorous test and
are generally considered worthy of consideration by the greater scientific
community” before they are published. Ibid. Of the hundreds of laboratory
studies in the record, nearly all have been published in prominent, peer-
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