Long before donning the trademark white coat, Dr. Jacl was just a desert jackal with an inconvenient gift: Jacl could recognize faces better than most humans, remember every detail of every stranger he ever met, and spot an unfairness in life from a mile away.
According to lab mythology, Dr. Jacl's academic career began the day Jacl wandered onto a university campus, walked straight into a Cognitive Psychology lecture, and never left.Â
From there, Dr. Jacl earned a reputation:
Master of memory,
Defender of fair lineups,
Unpaid emotional support character for stressed-out RAs,
And occasional menace to make things fun.
After years of unofficial consulting, the Jones Applied Cognition Lab finally gave Jacl an honorary doctorate and a permanent home. Now Dr. Jacl watches over experiments, oversees quality control for his brand, and reminds the team that science should be curious, bold, and just a little mischievous.
If you hear scratching in the data room late at nightâdonât worry. Itâs just Dr. Jacl double-checking stimuli spreadsheets for counterbalancing errors.Â
đ¨âźď¸ BREAKING NEWS âźď¸đ¨Â
August, 12, 2025
At 11:07 AM this morning, the local Pawlice Department was called about a crime in progress. A potential PURRpetrator walked into the bookstore down the street and walked out without paying for a rare copy of the original version of the book Memory & Mind!
The JACL Team just got word that our beloved Dr. Jacl was brought in by detectives as a suspect in this crime đąđ°đł But, we know OUR team leader is innocent! Dr. Jacl may be mischievous in her quest for knowledge but never a thief!! Buckle up and stay tuned for updates as we fight to protect and prevent having to exonerate Dr. Jacl for wrongful conviction!!
Over the next few months, we will be providing updates about Dr. Jacl's case! In doing so, we'll be pointing out procedural issues with gathering eyewitness evidence using Dr. Jacl's case, and we'll try to help educate you on the mission of our lab and importance of eyewitness memory and identification research!
đ¨âźď¸ BREAKING NEWS âźď¸đ¨Â
October 2025
Case #: CJ-8119
Reporting Officer: Sgt. Barkson, Pawlice Dept.
Eyewitness 2 Description (verbatim): âUh... medium-sized... brown fur...maybe male? Average age? ... Oh! And definitely wearing big, nerdy glasses.âÂ
Thatâs it. Thatâs the entire description!
Sounds vague? Sure. But in eyewitness science, vague descriptors arenât always bad. Why? When detectives build lineups, they need fillers (the non-suspects) to put in the lineup, so they use two main approaches to select these individuals:
1ď¸âŁ Suspect-matched: make the fillers look like the suspect
2ď¸âŁ Description-matched: make the fillers match the witnessâs description
Dr. Jones and her collaboratorsâ conducted a study in 2019, showing that when building lineups, vague descriptions can actually make a differenceâdescription-matched fillers lineups led to higher discriminability for guilty and innocent suspects. Suspect-matched ones contained fillers with high degrees of similarity-clones, which probably led to the ID task becoming more difficult.Â
See Carlson et al. (2019a) below:
But, what about distinctive teal glasses? Do we leave them on, take them off, or give everyone glasses? If the PURRpetrator was described wearing them during the crime, Dr. Jones and colleagues found evidence of a boost in eyewitnessâs ability to discriminate between innocent and guilty when factors (i.e., glasses) are as similar as possible between the crime itself and the lineup ID task. We also found evidence suggesting the importance of internal facial features, so the Pawlice may want to ensure all lineup members have glasses, but weâll see what they do!
See Carlson et al. (2019b) below:
Weâve also found evidence in support of the claim that you only need 2 description matched filers with the suspect to produce better ID performance!Â
See Carlson et al. (2020) below:
đ¨âźď¸ BREAKING NEWS âźď¸đ¨
Â
December 2025
Case #: CJ-8119
The Pawlice finally released the lineup they used in Dr. Jaclâs case.
And⌠the lineup practically pointed at Dr. Jacl.
Exhibit A: The Distinctive Glasses Disaster
Remember the eyewitness description?
âUh... medium-sized... brown fur...maybe male? Average age? ... Oh! And definitely wearing big, nerdy glasses.âÂ
So youâd think the Pawlice would handle the glasses carefullyâbecause you literally warned them this was the key issue: leave them on, take them off, or give everyone glasses?Â
Well⌠they chose a secret fourth option:
â
Only ONE lineup member has the distinctive teal glasses
â
And wouldnât you know it â that one is Dr. Jacl.
âDo you recognize the PURRpetrator?âÂ
to
âWhich one matches the description?â Thatâs how an identification becomes more about guessing the âbest matchâ than recognizing the culprit.
Put similar glasses on everyone, OR
Put no glasses on anyone, OR
Use fillers selected so the suspect doesnât pop out as the obvious choice
What happens nextâŚ
The witness is scheduled to view the lineup again next week. And if Sgt. Barkson does what Sgt. Barkson usually does, we may be headed straight into the next classic problem: confidence inflation after the ID. đŹ
Stay tuned.
See Jones et al. 2020
Stay tuned for the lineup reveal & Dr. Jacl's case's legal proceedings Â
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