Expert psychological testimony about eyewitnesses: An update

My early work in psychology was largely in what might be called pure or basic experimental psychology. To the extent that I thought my work had any application to the larger world around me, that potential application was limited to human factors, reflecting my training at Michigan in the early 1960s with Paul Fitte. However, when Bill Bevan moved to Johns Hopkins from Kansas State in 1966 things started to change; through personal example he showed that a person can have interests in broad social and policy issues and yet still do serious research. That influence was still strongly present some years later when I began thinking about and working on eyewitness testimony -- a topic with great social impact and, not coincidentally, an area in which basic and applied research can be difficult to distinguish.