Gladwell takes a look at the Duke case

Malcolm Gladwell wonders about our ability to make eyewitness identifications. An excerpt:

In Blink, I mentioned the research of Jonathan Schooler on lineups: he’s showed that merely requiring people to write down a physical description of the suspect before viewing the lineup radical impairs their ability to pick out the correct person.

But the Duke case is an example of another, even more problematic aspect of eyewitness identifications, and that is that we aren’t particular good at making them across races.