《经济学人》双语：目击证人的证词可靠吗？

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《经济学人》双语：目击证人的证词可靠吗？

原文标题：
The psychology of justice
First impressions
Eyewitness evidence can be more reliable than thought
正义心理学
第一印象
目击者的证词可能比想象中更可靠

But only the first time you ask
但只有第一次问讯才可靠

[Paragraph 1]
THE “SATANIC PANIC” that swept through America in the 1980s and 1990s held that thousands of ordinary people up and down the country were secretly members of devil-worshipping cults which were abusing, raping and murdering children on an industrial scale.
20世纪80年代和90年代席卷美国的“撒旦恐慌”，全国上下成千上万的普通人都是恶魔崇拜邪教的秘密成员，这些邪教曾大规模地虐待、强j和谋杀儿童。

Alleged victims made detailed allegations, often after therapy designed to “recover” memories that had supposedly been buried in the aftermath of trauma.
通常在记忆治疗（“恢复”创伤后失去的记忆）之后，受害者提出了详细的指控。

Many people went to prison. None of it was true.
许多人进了监狱。这些记忆都不是真相。

[Paragraph 2]
One after-effect of the panic was to cement in the minds of both the public and the justice system the idea that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
恐慌的一个后遗症是，在公众和司法系统的头脑中巩固了“目击者证词不可靠”的想法。

That fitted with experiments by psychologists such as Elizabeth Loftus, which demonstrated just how malleable memories can be.
这与心理学家伊丽莎白·洛夫斯的实验相吻合，实验证明了记忆的易变性。

The Innocence Project, an American charity, examined 375 cases of wrongful conviction for all sorts of crimes, and found misidentification of suspects by witnesses was a factor in around 70% of them.
美国慈善机构“无罪项目”调查了375起因各种罪行而被错判的案件，发现证人对嫌疑人的错误识别这一影响因素占70%左右。

[Paragraph 3]
But at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, John Wixted, a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, argued that this institutional distrust has gone too far.
但是在美国科学促进会的年会上，圣地亚哥加利福尼亚大学的心理学家约翰·威克斯特德认为，这种制度上的不信任已经走得太极端了。

Eyewitness memories, he said, can in fact be very reliable—if they are tested in the right circumstances.
他说，如果在正确的情况下进行试验，目击者的记忆事实上是非常可靠的。

[Paragraph 4]
The key to reliability, said Dr Wixted, is the confidence of witnesses in their assessments.
威克斯特博士说，可靠性的关键是证人对其评估的信心。

Experiments suggest that when witnesses to a simulated crime are confident of having identified the suspect in a later photo line-up, they are almost always correct.
实验表明，在模拟犯罪中，目击者如果确信在随后的一系列照片中能认出了嫌疑人，那么他们几乎全对。

Similarly, if they are sure the suspect is not present, that is likely to be right too. Only when a witness is unsure does a risk of misidentification arise.
同样，如果他们确信嫌疑人不在场，也很可能是正确的。只有当证人不确定时，才会出现误认的风险。

A field study conducted in 2016 by Houston’s police came to similar conclusions.
休斯顿警方在2016年进行的一项实地研究得出了类似的结论。

[Paragraph 5]
The problem is that this confidence is trustworthy only the first time the question is asked.
问题是，只有在第一次被问到相关问题时，这种信心才是可信的。

One of the unavoidable frustrations of quantum mechanics is that measuring a particle’s position or energy irretrievably alters it.
量子力学无法避免的挫折之一是，在测量粒子的位置或能量时，会不可避免地改变它。

Something similar, said Dr Wixted, happens with memories. The very act of testing them contaminates every other test that comes after.
威克斯特博士说，记忆也会发生类似的事情。测试它们的行为本身就会污染接下来的每一次测试。

Assessing people’s faces for a possible match, for example, lodges them in a witness’s memory.
例如，评估人们的脸是否可能匹配，会让他们留在证人的记忆中。

Once that has happened, anything from police encouragement to the high-pressure environment of a courtroom can twist subsequent attempts at recollection.
一旦发生这种情况，从警方的鼓励到法庭的高压环境出庭，任何事情都可能扭曲后续的回忆。

[Paragraph 6]
Dr Wixted drew a comparison with evidence such as DNA samples. Improper handling can contaminate these.
威克斯特博士与DNA样本等证据进行了比较。处理不当会污染样本。

That does not mean DNA tests are inherently unreliable, but it does mean the technology must be used carefully.
这并不意味着DNA检测本身就不可靠，但它确实意味着必须谨慎使用这项技术。

The same, he says, is true of witnesses. The answer, as he and Dr Loftus argue in a recently published paper, is to test a witness’s memory as fairly as possible, and—crucially—to do so only once.
他说，证人也是如此。正如他和洛夫特斯博士在最近发表的一篇论文中所说，答案是尽可能公平地测试证人的记忆，关键是只测试一次。

[Paragraph 7]
Decades after the Satanic panic, the matter remains important.
撒旦恐慌几十年后，这件事仍然很重要。

Dr Wixted cited the case of Charles Don Flores, a prisoner awaiting execution for a murder committed in 1998.
威克斯特博士引用了查尔斯·唐·弗洛雷斯的案例，他因1998年的谋杀案等待处决。

Initially, when shown a line-up that included Mr Flores, a crucial witness said none of the people matched her recollection.
最初，当看到包括弗洛雷斯在内的一组人时，一位关键证人说，没有一个人与她的记忆相符。

(She had recalled a white man with long hair. Mr Flores is of Latin American extraction, and had short hair then.)
（她想起一位留着长发的白人男子。而弗洛雷斯先生是拉丁美洲血统，当时留着短发。）

By the time the case came to trial a year later, she had changed her mind, and Mr Flores was convicted.
一年后，当此案开庭审理时，她改变了主意，弗洛雷斯先生被判有罪。

His appeal on the basis of the witness’s change of mind has been denied.
他因证人改变主意而提出的上诉被驳回。

Dr Wixted, however, suggests she was likely to have been right the first time and wrong the second.
然而，威克斯特博士表示，她第一次回忆可能是对的，第二次回忆可能是错的。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量614左右）
原文出自：2022年2月26日《经济学人》Science & technology版块。
精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路
本文翻译整理：Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来源于网络）

撒旦恐慌SATANIC PANIC：是一个大致覆盖20世纪80年代的宗教事件，很像是基督教的猎巫运动。在听到一个所谓的撒旦活动的故事后，人们试图更加警惕，最终错误地将社区的各个成员识别为撒旦阴谋的一部分。教师和日托工作者在恐慌期间明显成为攻击目标，因为社区确信，那些处于权威地位的人是仪式性地猥亵儿童群体。这种所谓的性骚扰现在被称为撒旦仪式，SRA【美国的邪教搜捕】和FBI已经得出结论，这是一个由不明分子散播的阴谋论。在这些案件中，没有任何一个团体被认定犯有不当行为。在1992年，他们对撒旦教会的无端起诉正是被称为”撒旦恐慌”的事件。

【重点句子】（3个）

One after-effect of the panic was to cement in the minds of both the public and the justice system the idea that eyewitness testimony is unreliable.
恐慌的一个后遗症是，在公众和司法系统的头脑中巩固了“目击者证词不可靠”的想法。

The key to reliability is the confidence of witnesses in their assessments.
可靠性的关键是证人对其评估的信心。

This confidence is trustworthy only the first time the question is asked.
只有在第一次被问到这个问题时，这种信心才是可信的。

自由英语之路