Near death, explained

[cosmicaug]

48. Eyewitness testimony

Not really. Once you realize the Kimberly Clark account was not publicly reported until seven years after the fact with no evidence that she ever took contemporary notes it simply becomes a lot less impressive.

No one is talking about anyone lying. Memories change. They are not reliable and the more time passes since the event being recalled the less reliable the memory is likely to be. This is why you have to be very careful with eyewitness testimony in general.

It's like when you ask people to recall what they saw when they witnessed a magic trick being performed. Very often they give accounts of seeing things which they could not have seen (because they did not happen). These people are not lying. They simply have been deceived by the way out minds work such that they reconstructed a (false) reality after the fact and incorporated it into their memory of the event.