Sincere witnesses to the same event produce irreconcilable accounts, so contradiction is not evidence of dishonesty.
Named from Kurosawa's 1950 film, in which four accounts of one killing are irreconcilable. It is a term of art in law, journalism and qualitative research precisely because none of the witnesses is lying.
In practice
- Three witnesses to one collision give three different sequences, and the camera footage matches none of them exactly.
- An incident review where four engineers describe different sequences is not evidence of a cover-up; it is what memory under stress produces.
- Standing
- Used as a term of art in law, journalism, and qualitative research.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Science & Epistemology
- Essay
- The ways evidence misleads