Source of article ComCon - Communication Consulting.

A key feature of the American legal system is that the litigants control the production and presentation of evidence. Two impacts on evidence presented at trial happen as a result of this key feature. First, the evidence heard at trial is a selective and non-representative sampling of facts offered to suit the interests of the litigants. Second, investigators frequently generate evidence by combing through large bodies of information for relevant facts. Broad investigations may turn up circumstantial evidence that appears to be highly probative of a claim, but which is actually coincidental. Having multiple opportunities to search for evidence increases the chance of finding seemingly supportive evidence by chance alone, even when the claim being forwarded is actually false. Two recent experiments conducted by Koehler and Thompson (2006) examined whether jurors appreciate that multiple searches may generate seemingly supportive evidence by chance alone, and whether the evidence they hear at trial is a selective and unrepresentative sample of the underlying facts…