Mythbusters And Hypnotism

On their show today (rerun), they did a study on the memories of 3 people who witnessed an event with an element of stress involved (actors as delivery men who got angry with one of the stars of the show). They gave them a test afterward to see what they could recall. Not much! Then...they had a hypnotist come in and he gave them the same test while they were "under".

The results were a huge success. Not only did one recall the tattoo on one perp's neck, but the other also recalled correctly the name on the sewn tag of the shirt. All three did amazingly better recalling exact comments made and what took place while under hypnosis.

My question is...why aren't they putting this to use in Law Enforcement when trying to gather information from eyewitnesses?! If it passes the test on Mythbusters...it certainly could be a tool worth using!

Wow yea if it could be used for witnesses as a proven and helpful tool for detail recall that would be great.

Because it has a stigma that would label officials "looney" kind of like admitting you saw a UFO. I've also heard it is not suggested because the information would be deemed so questionable in court.

Too bad that we don't have a little more outside the box thinking sometimes.

There are people that can't be hypnotized. I think that's because they resist. But reportedly, you don't do anything that you'd normally wouldn't do during a session. I saw a show where the guy had 10 people on stage that were hypnotized. The things they did was hilarious.

Unless you can have a session in court, I wouldn't allow it. How can you prove it? But if it was used to jog someone's memory to help cops find a suspect, that's different. Imagine if you saw someone forcefully shoving another into a car yet the person being forced didn't scream out for help. You might remember the color of car, the gender of the people, etc. But the important clues such as the license plate, the make and model of the car, full description of the people may elude you. Later on, you watch the news and see someone was abducted and killed. The person killed jogs your memory of what you saw earlier, but you failed to take mental notes on things that could help the police catch the killer. But you did happen to look at the license plate, the model name of the car, even saw the small dent on the right hand side of the back bumper. This could be recalled under hypnosis.

My father self taught himself how to hypnotise people. He would do it to people at parties and it was unbelievable to watch,but some people could go under so easily and others not. I had him try me but I just wouldn't let go.
It was amazing the things that people would remember from their past. (a clear sign of the capacity our brains have).
I agree it would be a great tool for investigating a crime,but it would never hold up in court.

They do use hypnotism sometimes when trying to get suppressed information from a witness, however it is a risky method since the results of the hypnosis are not allowed in court and so they can lose a witness at that end. However, in the case of a missing person or serial killer or other situation where getting the information from the witness may be a matter of life and death, LE may opt to do hypnosis and deal with the court problems later.

Cypros said:

They do use hypnotism sometimes when trying to get suppressed information from a witness, however it is a risky method since the results of the hypnosis are not allowed in court and so they can lose a witness at that end. However, in the case of a missing person or serial killer or other situation where getting the information from the witness may be a matter of life and death, LE may opt to do hypnosis and deal with the court problems later.

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Exactly. And the reason it isn't admissible in court is because studies show it is quite easy to impose "memories" on subjects of hypnosis. That doesn't mean you can get a subject to go out and murder people (as in the great horror classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari), but you can get them to remember things they never witnessed. (Just as happens in real life, where many, if not most, of us can "remember" things from childhood that are merely the product of stories we've heard time and again.)