Michigan State University. "Sleep may help eyewitnesses from choosing innocent suspects."
ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 8 February 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170906144924.htm>.
I read a Michigan State University study on the benefits of sleep. But, this article took a very interesting point of view. They investigated how sleep can help eyewitnesses choose the perpetrator in a police lineup and not an innocent person. The article began by showing that choosing the wrong perp is a very big problem in the US. Nearly 70% of all wrongful imprisonments are due to someone picking the wrong person in a police lineup. The study was done by having 200 people watch a video of the crime and then identifying the suspect in a police lineup. One group was allowed to sleep before they did the identifying where the other group did not. The group that did not sleep identified the right person 42% of the time while the group that slept was able to do so 66% of the time, a major difference. The researchers believe participants who slept were more likely to use an "absolute strategy," in which they compare each person in the lineup to their memory of the suspect, while participants who didn't sleep were more likely to use a "relative strategy," in which they compare the people in the lineup to each other to determine who most resembles the perpetrator relative to the others.
This is a major finding that would help the rest of the field of forensic science. It brings the bigger idea up of should trials be rushed to appease the public or should they be time consuming in order to cut down on the wrongful imprisonment numbers. All in all will hopefully bring chance to the way police lineups are done.
This article was very well written as the authors used very concise vocabulary so the piece was easily understandable. In addition, the piece had lots of direct quotations from the actual article that brought lots of credibility to it.
Emma Hulbert
ReplyDelete9/14/21
ScienceDaily. (2017, September 6). Sleep may help eyewitnesses from choosing innocent suspects. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 14, 2021, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170906144924.htm.
https://bhscorechem.blogspot.com/2018/03/michigan-state-university.html
This review of the science daily article “Sleep may help eyewitnesses from choosing innocent suspects” was eye-catching because of its unique topic. Including the quote, “Nearly 70% of all wrongful imprisonments are due to someone picking the wrong person in a police lineup,” was a good introduction to the topic because it makes the readers care about the topic. They backed up their claim with evidence of how the study was conducted and the results are valid by establishing a direct connection between sleep and recognition. They also explained why lack of sleep caused people to be less likely to identify suspects.
Although the review is very well written, it sometimes feels over-explained. In the beginning of the article the writer claimed this topic to be a “very big problem” instead of stating a fact that could show us this like they did later. When comparing percentages, they described it as “a major difference” instead of leaving the readers to come to that conclusion themselves. Without the extra text they could have gone a little more in depth about absolute and relative strategy. These strategies seem like a big part of the problem because they provide the answer to why this happens so often. Since this topic is not well known it would have been helpful for the definitions provided to be a little more explained. The critique paragraph feels incomplete because it is very generalized. More details would be helpful.
Overall, this review definitely left an impression and I will remember its contents. I enjoyed reading it because I had never heard of the topic before. I picked this review because its title was very engaging. This has changed my understanding of police lineups and has taught me about the strategies our brains use in order to compare faces.