Low Prior Probability and Witness Reliability

It is plausible that a witness’s credibility is lowered if he testifies to an outcome that has low probability, but this is not always true. If the outcome has a low prior due only to its specificity (as in a fair lottery), witness credibility is not lowered by attesting to it. Even when witness credibility does drop as a result of the testimony, it can substantially confirm its contents, and agreement between independent witnesses can “give back” credibility that one witness lost. Formal modeli