Evidence and testimonial: A fundamental split

Who can deny that people give false or inaccurate testimony both purposely and accidentally? Some very sane very honest people swear they saw something when the fact of the matter is they simply are mistaken. And sometimes people flat out lie.So certainly we should always take what others say with a grain of salt, even the Bible says it takes two or more eye witnesses to convict someone of a crime, but certainly it would be wrong of us to totally dismiss testimonial evidence, sometimes people get it right.I think it would also be unwise to always take hard evidence, ie: lab tests, experiments, etc, at face value. First of all, evidence/facts/data must be processed and interpreted by humans. Yes, the same humans who can be wrong about there own eye witness testimony. Second, even evidence/facts/data that are processed and interpreted correctly can only tell us limited information about the thing we are studying. Because lets face it the evidence of a thing is not the thing.Of course I am not implying that nothing can ever be learned because no evidence can ever be reliable. Certainly there comes a point when the preponderance of evidence suggests the hypothesis, but that applies to both physical and testimonial evidence. I hope I have made sense.

Hey Mammuthus, thanks for responding, That leads me down a new path, bare with me I haven’t thought this through. Unless you actually did the DNA test you would be relying on someone else’s verification. You could read their results but they could make up results, so unless you actually performed the test you would not have true knowledge of the results. But here’s the catch, why should I trust your analysis, unless I do the analysis I will not have true knowledge and so on and so on.I think you will say, well if enough people run the DNA test and all come up with the same results, then this would be confirming the evidence. But can the same thing be said about eye witness testimony. If enough people confirm it, how doubtful is it? Just thinking out loud here.

Hey PS. Well that leads to a new question. What is the value of first hand knowledge. If I want to teach my nine year old daughter about gravity, I could pull out the old physics books and do all the mathematical equations for her and say, there that’s gravity. Or I could grab a ball go outside, throw it in the air and have her experience gravity first hand.Or what if I wanted to know what honey tasted like. I could go to a chemists and have them tell me the chemical composition of honey and write a 3000 page dissertation on the taste of honey, or I could talk to someone who has actually tasted honey. The one with personal knowledge of the taste of honey would be a better source for me to gain knowledge. Of course if I wanted absolute knowledge I would have to taste honey for myself. Ill stop now because I feel I am rambling.

Hey Knight. Oh I believe the study. People’s recall ability is terrible. Most of the people on death row in the US who were eventually proven not guilty, were done so by DNA evidence overturning eye witness testimony. But I am just making the observation that eye witness testimony is not always wrong and therefore should not always be discarded.Another thing I just thought of is that the same people who were fooled by the Disney experiment could be the same joker doing the DNA test in a murder trial. How scary is that?

Hey PS Excellent point. And that’s kind of what I am saying about first hand knowledge.Can we agree that this human error exists in all humans, preachers and scientists included? Lets face it most of us have never split an atom, or had the awesome privilege of peering into space through the Hubble Telescope. We take peoples word on a lot of things. And these are the same people fooled by the Disney experiment Knight mentioned.