Summary of Scott’s speech

In this speech, Scott mainly talked about how to use scientific theory to solve some problems in trail. At the beginning, the professor briefly introduced a wrongly convicted case in which a father of six teenagers was killed and a young boy was sentenced to prison without any evidence, except the eyewitness of the teenagers. The reason of wrong eyewitness is mainly caused by a principle in human memory research: the brain abhors a vacuum and it will reconstruct the memory. In order to clarify the theory, the professor took the horrific events 9/11 for example and concluded that reconstructed memories would cause the eyewitness fallibility. 

As an expert in eyewitness memory identification and the nature of human night vision, the professor reconstructed the scene of the crime. Then he used the cameras to photograph the actual crime scene and found the lighting condition was very poor. The professor successfully persuaded the judge to see the crime scene and the judge could hardly see the details even the car was very close, due to the shadow cloud of the roof of the car and the poor lighting condition. Finally, the judge retrial the case and released the young man. Therefore, the professor said that we should keep cautious about our own memories. Because they were reconstructed and might cause wrong eyewitness.