TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference.
In the following TEDTalks video, Scott Fraser, a forensic psychologist who studies how humans remember crimes and bear witness to them, discusses how fallible eyewitness testimony can be and suggests that even close-up eyewitnesses to a crime can create “memories” they couldn’t have seen.
Why? Because the brain abhors a vacuum.
It’s a topic of particular interest that not only illustrates the subjective nature of eyewitness testimony, but also indirectly highlights the issue of how valuable crime scene evidence is to an investigation as the information gathered at a scene can help to either prove or disprove what a witness may have “seen” and “remembered”.
Please note: In the original version of this talk, Scott Fraser misspoke about available footage of Two World Trade Center (Tower 2). The misstatement has been edited out for clarity. To view the original video, please click here.
