Photo: flickr/tadsonbusseyPolice have been using lineups for years to help eyewitnesses identify suspects in crimes. But what if you closed your eyes or it was too dark to see what was going on? Well, according to this study, "nosewitness identification" might be the next best thing. These researchers showed subjects videos of people committing violet crimes (or neutral videos in a control condition), while at the same time asking them to sniff a sample of body odor supposedly from the perpetrator.
Fifteen minutes later, the subjects were asked to pick out the odor from a lineup of five body odor samples. Turns out that these "nosewitnesses" performed better than chance in picking out the correct BO, especially after watching the crime videos. The researchers suggest that BO lineups might be a good alternative to visual lineups for certain types of crime... I'm just glad I'm not the one who has ...
