The Malleability of Memory
Upon reading the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision in State v. Larry R. Henderson the first thought that occurred to me was that if courts hearing toxic tort cases in which product identification is an issue were to scrutinize such testimony under a similar standard our toxic justice problem would soon be solved.
The science stuff starts on page 40. The social science is, per usual, weak with small sample sizes involving unrepresentative subjects and the analysis consists too often of counting hands of credentialled experts. Nevertheless, the evidence that "memories fade with time" and that "memory decay is irreversible" ought to be kept in mind any time a witness claims to recall the incidental use of a product decades before.
