The debate between McCloskey and Egeth and Loftus concerning the usefulness of expert psychological testimony in court serves here as the springboard for an essay-review of a significant part of its context, a retrospective evaluation of Loftus's book Eyewitness Testimony. The partisanship evident in the book provides a case study of the unusual vulnerability of psychology, in policy contexts, to overgeneralization and underqualification of small average effects.
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