Applied Eyewitness Research: The Other Mission

Debates in eyewitness literature may leave readers with the impression that the sole purpose of eyewitness research lies in eyewitness experts' ability to assist triers of fact in evaluating eyewitness accuracy. Much research is overlooked. System variable research seeks to improve accuracy of eyewitness identifications, not to inform jurors about potential errors. Experimental methods that manipulate variables to assess their causal status are weakly suited to calibrate a jury on the magnitude of effect. When the experimentally manipulated variable can be fixed at an optimal level in an actual case, the logic of the experiment and its application are parallel in ways that avoid many criticisms applicable to the estimation approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)