when unanimity is too much of a good thing

The “paradox of unanimity”: if everybody agrees on a noisy event, they are almost certainly wrong.

Experiments with simulated crimes have shown misidentification rates as high as 48% in cases where the witnesses see the perpetrator only briefly as he runs away from a crime scene. In these situations, it would be highly unlikely to find large, unanimous agreement.

[via Danny Yee’s blog]

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