The CODOH Revisionist Forum

Nessie makes frequent mention to "witness studies." Usually his argument is that "studies show" that even eyewitnesses who are honest and not crazy are still inaccurate and unreliable in many respects (especially dates and numbers); therefore, we cannot reject or discount Holocaust witness for contradictions and errors. For example,

Nessie wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 1:20 pm That Reder's recollection does not precisely match Kola's findings, and is exaggerated, is to be expected. Multiple studies of witness estimation of size and numbers prove that it is often poor. Revisionist attempts to discredit witnesses never take into account studies of memory and recall.

Another good example is that Nessie thinks that Vrba inventing a story about Himmler watching a gassing at Birkenau is an example of a "normal" error which should not in any way lessen our opinion of Vrba. He simply "got the date wrong."
viewtopic.php?t=69

Ok, Nessie. Since you claim to be an expert on the literature on witness psychology, etc., and you make vague references to these "studies" in every other post, I'm going to have to request that you enlighten us with an overview of this rich literature that you are so intimately familiar with. List some of the seminal papers in the field, some of the main schools of thought, the outstanding disagreements, and so forth. Tell us how your interpretation of the work of e.g. Elizabeth Loftus and other researchers differs from that of revisionists who have discussed her work.

TIA

I did come across this video a while back presenting a range of research on memory:



He argues that our memory is generally reliable, especially for significant personal events.

This is of course not to deny that there is research on the unreliability of memory. This video goes into how memory can be distorted:



That video references this study on 9/11:

https://memlab.yale.edu/sites/default/f ... 20JEPG.pdf

Other research on the potential unreliability of memory here:

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/conce ... drome/283/

The Myth of Repressed Memory: False Memories and Allegations of Sexual Abuse by Elizabeth Loftus

Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses to Die by Mark Pendergrast

Btw Mark Pendergrast also wrote a book about Jerry Sandusky being innocent and that all of his accusers either have false memory from priming or were lying. He does this by looking into their accusations and argues that they don't line up with the facts. Is this kind of investigation of accusers out of bounds, Nessie?

The Most Hated Man in America: Jerry Sandusky and the Rush to Judgment by Mark Pendergrast

I do have to wonder, if memory in general is not very accurate, how can we use it for anything? It seems like we would just have to throw out all witness testimony from court, period. There's no point in cross examination or anything like that. In that case, we need not consider any eyewitness testimony for the holocaust or any other event for that matter. I hope Nessie can clear this up for us.

Archie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 3:57 am Nessie makes frequent mention to "witness studies." Usually his argument is that "studies show" that even eyewitnesses who are honest and not crazy are still inaccurate and unreliable in many respects (especially dates and numbers); therefore, we cannot reject or discount Holocaust witness for contradictions and errors. For example,

Nessie wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 1:20 pm That Reder's recollection does not precisely match Kola's findings, and is exaggerated, is to be expected. Multiple studies of witness estimation of size and numbers prove that it is often poor. Revisionist attempts to discredit witnesses never take into account studies of memory and recall.

Another good example is that Nessie thinks that Vrba inventing a story about Himmler watching a gassing at Birkenau is an example of a "normal" error which should not in any way lessen our opinion of Vrba. He simply "got the date wrong."
viewtopic.php?t=69

Ok, Nessie. Since you claim to be an expert on the literature on witness psychology, etc., and you make vague references to these "studies" in every other post, I'm going to have to request that you enlighten us with an overview of this rich literature that you are so intimately familiar with. List some of the seminal papers in the field, some of the main schools of thought, the outstanding disagreements, and so forth. Tell us how your interpretation of the work of e.g. Elizabeth Loftus and other researchers differs from that of revisionists who have discussed her work.

TIA

I have previously linked to studies that back up my claims that people are not good at remembering things like dates and estimating things like size.

It is interesting that you are asking me for more information now. Should you, before you started to analyse witness evidence, not have learnt at some basics about memory recall and reliability and how to reliably identify when someone is lying? Key to revisionist belief is that 100% of the witnesses who worked at the AR camps, Chelmno and A-B Kremas, lied that there were gassings. I will link you to online evidence relating to witnesses, but please answer my question, how do you determine that 100% of the witnesses who say they saw gassings, are lying?

fireofice wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 8:42 am ...I do have to wonder, if memory in general is not very accurate, how can we use it for anything? It seems like we would just have to throw out all witness testimony from court, period. There's no point in cross examination or anything like that. I hope Nessie can clear this up for us.

Indeed, how can we use witness evidence, when it is not very accurate? That applies to revisionist claims of witness lying when they describe seeing gassings. How do revisionists know that the witness is lying, rather than they are telling the truth, but they are not very accurate? Why did the courts not throw out all that not very accurate witness evidence? Why do historians who have researched the Holocaust and journalists who have interviewed witnesses, not discounted the not very accurate descriptions? There are two main reasons why.

1 - WITNESS ISSUES ARE KNOWN ABOUT AND TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT.

The courts, historians and journalists, know, from their experience and multiple studies of witnesses, that witnesses are often not very accurate. That is normal for witnesses. Memory fades, people make mistake, they are poor at estimating the passage of time and distances, and they can exaggerate, use figures of speech and hyperbole to emphasise certain points. They can be influenced by what they have heard about the event they saw and repeat hearsay as if they saw what they describe. Revisionists, with zero experience of witnesses, are pretty ignorant of that.

In terms of accuracy, witnesses become more inaccurate with the details. For example, people on a bus witness a multiple car crash. They all agree on the basic event, there was a big car crash. They then start to disagree on the details, about the cars, number of victims etc.

That is the case with the witnesses who worked at the AR camps, Chelmno and A-B Kremas. 100% of them agree that they were used for mass gassings. They then start to vary on the details.

The courts, historians and journalists expect witnesses to vary on the details and they know that is not evidence to prove they were inaccurate. To establish accuracy, the most reliable witnesses are identified. They are the witnesses who got the best view of what happened. They also tend to be the calmest and those who gave their evidence soonest after the event, before issues of memory fade and contamination take effect. That often makes the Nazis the most accurate witnesses to events at the AR camps etc and 100% of them admitted to gassings taking place. Witnesses who describe details in a matter of fact way, avoiding hyperbole, figures of speech are generally more accurate in the details.

2 - CORROBORATION.

The most reliable way of determining witness accuracy and truthfulness, is corroboration. If a witness makes a claim that is also made by another witness who has no connection with them and no reason to collude, they corroborate. When Nazis and Jews agree, that is strong corroboration, as they had little contact and no reason to collude. If a witness claims a camp received mass transports and there are documents that record mass transports, there is corroboration.

Courts, historians and journalists use corroboration to determine accuracy and truthfulness. That is why, if a witness claims 2 million arrived at a camp, but the documents say on 800,000 arrived, that means the witness is not very accurate, but they are still being truthful about mass arrivals. Revisionists prefer to use their opinion on the believability of witness and will declare them too unreliable to use, they are likely lying, because of their over estimation.

That is where revisionists go wrong. They are not accurately assessing witness accuracy.

Another good example is that Nessie thinks that Vrba inventing a story about Himmler watching a gassing at Birkenau is an example of a "normal" error which should not in any way lessen our opinion of Vrba. He simply "got the date wrong."

The camp regime was otherwise marked by its pettiness and cruelty. When Heinrich Himmler visited on 17 July 1942 (during which he watched a gassing), the inmates were told everything had to be spotless.

This is what Vrba's Wikipedia says about Himmler's visit, omitting Vrba's wrong date and adding the gassing, where there were no Kremas in Birkenau yet?

TlsMS93 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 12:35 pm Another good example is that Nessie thinks that Vrba inventing a story about Himmler watching a gassing at Birkenau is an example of a "normal" error which should not in any way lessen our opinion of Vrba. He simply "got the date wrong."

The camp regime was otherwise marked by its pettiness and cruelty. When Heinrich Himmler visited on 17 July 1942 (during which he watched a gassing), the inmates were told everything had to be spotless.

This is what Vrba's Wikipedia says about Himmler's visit, omitting Vrba's wrong date and adding the gassing, where there were no Kremas in Birkenau yet?

This article is a good read for those who genuinely want to understand more about witness evidence;

https://nobaproject.com/modules/eyewitn ... ory-biases

"Memory is also susceptible to a wide variety of other biases and errors. People can forget events that happened to them and people they once knew. They can mix up details across time and place."

https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/ouco ... &section=1

"Our ability to provide the correct date for an event may also be poor. Research testing participants’ ability to date episodes they had personally experienced showed that accuracy in dating was dependent on how long ago the episode occurred (known as the retention interval), and that accuracy decreased rapidly as the retention interval lengthened. When asked about experiences that had taken place in the previous week, participants tended to date accurately 85–90% of the time. For experiences that occurred over three months ago, however, accurate dating dropped to 15–20% (Thompson et al., 1996)."

Research has found that we are poor at remembering dates. Try yourself to remember, off the cuff, no research, what dates your parents were born, you went to school, got your first job, were the victim of a crime, had an accident, saw your first live band, a close relative died, all major events in your life and see if it is easy or not and how accurate you are. Vrba is no different.

Nessie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 9:28 am

Archie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 3:57 am Nessie makes frequent mention to "witness studies." Usually his argument is that "studies show" that even eyewitnesses who are honest and not crazy are still inaccurate and unreliable in many respects (especially dates and numbers); therefore, we cannot reject or discount Holocaust witness for contradictions and errors. For example,

Nessie wrote: ↑Wed Nov 20, 2024 1:20 pm That Reder's recollection does not precisely match Kola's findings, and is exaggerated, is to be expected. Multiple studies of witness estimation of size and numbers prove that it is often poor. Revisionist attempts to discredit witnesses never take into account studies of memory and recall.

Another good example is that Nessie thinks that Vrba inventing a story about Himmler watching a gassing at Birkenau is an example of a "normal" error which should not in any way lessen our opinion of Vrba. He simply "got the date wrong."
viewtopic.php?t=69

Ok, Nessie. Since you claim to be an expert on the literature on witness psychology, etc., and you make vague references to these "studies" in every other post, I'm going to have to request that you enlighten us with an overview of this rich literature that you are so intimately familiar with. List some of the seminal papers in the field, some of the main schools of thought, the outstanding disagreements, and so forth. Tell us how your interpretation of the work of e.g. Elizabeth Loftus and other researchers differs from that of revisionists who have discussed her work.

TIA

I have previously linked to studies that back up my claims that people are not good at remembering things like dates and estimating things like size.

It is interesting that you are asking me for more information now. Should you, before you started to analyse witness evidence, not have learnt at some basics about memory recall and reliability and how to reliably identify when someone is lying? Key to revisionist belief is that 100% of the witnesses who worked at the AR camps, Chelmno and A-B Kremas, lied that there were gassings. I will link you to online evidence relating to witnesses, but please answer my question, how do you determine that 100% of the witnesses who say they saw gassings, are lying?

Since you are a bit slow, I was not really "asking for information." I was mocking you and seeking to expose your total ignorance which you have graciously confirmed with your initial replies.

There is a big difference between "a study" and "the literature." When a layperson like you googles something, finds a study, and posts the abstract, this is not a good way to establish things. There are lots of studies, often using very different approaches and getting very different results and this work builds on itself over time. Scholars in these fields (unlike you) actually follow this literature and have context to understand the individual papers. You really should have familiarity with "the literature" in a broad sense if you want to intelligently discuss an individual study. The problem of individual studies is well demonstrated in health-related research where there are numerous studies with contradictory results.

Most of this memory research is from psychologists and a lot of it is only a few decades old. Historians have been evaluating sources for a long time using their own methods. For instance, historical practice as a rule prefers sources that were recorded as earlier over later sources because it lessens the likelihood of contamination and false memory. They developed this rule of thumb without doing any "studies."

It is true that people are often bad with numbers and dates and may be inaccurate in some ways. (This is why it's better to have hard evidence.) But there is a limit to how far you can take that to cover for a bad witness.

Suppose I get a call from someone claiming to be someone I know but I get a little suspicious. Suppose I ask them "how many children do you have?" as I test. I know the answer is four. If they say two, I know the person is lying/is an imposter. You can't say "oh, people are bad with numbers, maybe it's really him and he made a math error." There are errors with numbers that are reasonable and ones that are unreasonable. You can't have an absolute rule that errors do no matter no matter how huge based on superficial googling of "studies."

If someone is describing a getaway car, let's say it was grey Honda four-door sedan.

If someone says they thought it was a brown Toyota sedan, that might be a reasonable error if the witness got only a quick look.

Poultry truck - not a reasonable error
Pink Barbie Corvette - not a reasonable error
Unicycle - not a reasonable error

I don't need a study to tell me this. If there is some research about borderline or counterintuitive cases, I would be open to considering it but I think for most of the stuff we deal with the traditional tools are more or less sufficient.

Archie wrote: ↑Thu Nov 21, 2024 2:46 pm ....

Most of this memory research is from psychologists and a lot of it is only a few decades old. Historians have been evaluating sources for a long time using their own methods. For instance, historical practice as a rule prefers sources that were recorded as earlier over later sources because it lessens the likelihood of contamination and false memory. They developed this rule of thumb without doing any "studies."

Historians are not as strict about witness errors, as courts or even journalists are. They are more inclined to accept hearsay evidence, as it can provide context, additional details, explain the chronology of events and discovery. Courts do not like hearsay, due to miscarriages of justice and journalists have to be careful as they can face legal action over inaccuracies.

The main way historians evaluate witness evidence, is corroboration. That is the most credible and reliable method for determining truthfulness and accuracy. A witness who gets a date wrong, is not going to cause historians to discount that witness.

It is true that people are often bad with numbers and dates and may be inaccurate in some ways. (This is why it's better to have hard evidence.)

Or corroboration from a source that is not another witness. In terms of dates, documents are the most reliable source.

But there is a limit to how far you can take that to cover for a bad witness.

Revisionist set the bar lower than anyone else, else they are left with no witnesses at all, who worked inside the camps where gas chambers are reported.

Suppose I get a call from someone claiming to be someone I know but I get a little suspicious. Suppose I ask them "how many children do you have?" as I test. I know the answer is four. If they say two, I know the person is lying/is an imposter. You can't say "oh, people are bad with numbers, maybe it's really him and he made a math error." There are errors with numbers that are reasonable and ones that are unreasonable. You can't have an absolute rule that errors do no matter no matter how huge based on superficial googling of "studies."

Historians do discount witnesses, whose evidence lacks credibility and is related more as a story, than what was witnessed. That is why the likes of Elie Wiesel are rarely quoted by historians. Journalists and historians have uncovered false witnesses, who have lied about their experiences in the camps. Errors do matter, which is why only certain witnesses are used, which then results in historians being accused of "cherry-picking". But, if they did not cherry-pick, then their absolute rule would to believe all witnesses and their claims.

Instead, it is you who has the absolute rule, every single witness who describes a gassing, mass graves or cremations of hundreds of thousands of people in certain camps, is lying. Hence, you have zero witnesses to events in the camps with gas chambers! You do not like it when I point out your 100% rate, denying it is the case. But you cannot name a single witness from an AR camp, Chelmno or A-B Krema, who said they saw gassings or the gas chambers, who you accept as telling the truth about that.

If someone is describing a getaway car, let's say it was grey Honda four-door sedan.

If someone says they thought it was a brown Toyota sedan, that might be a reasonable error if the witness got only a quick look.

Poultry truck - not a reasonable error
Pink Barbie Corvette - not a reasonable error
Unicycle - not a reasonable error

I don't need a study to tell me this. If there is some research about borderline or counterintuitive cases, I would be open to considering it but I think for most of the stuff we deal with the traditional tools are more or less sufficient.

Rather than your analogies, how about a more accurate example. An error is reasonable when it is explainable.

If someone who worked in an AR camp, but who processed property and was not at the gas chambers, and they say they were told that chlorine gas was used, that is an explainable error. It is hearsay.

If a Polish intelligence officer writes a report, based on rumours, that the death camps used chambers with electrified floors to kill, that is an explainable error. It is rumour, and potentially atrocity propaganda.

When both a Nazi and a Jew who worked at the camp and at the chambers, both state the chambers used the exhaust from an engine, the actual cause of death is established and the claims made about chlorine and electricity are now accepted as errors.

There are different claims that people were killed inside chambers, with three different methods of killing, one of which is established as the correct one, because those witnesses are eyewitnesses and corroborate each other.