One thing we know from studying studies is that you should not make radical changes based on a single study but rather wait for the result to be confirmed by other studies.  You don't know how "robust" a result is until an issue has been studied multiple ways by multiple researchers.  How many times would you have stopped and restarted drinking coffee if you went with every study that came along?

A while back there was some research that indicated that sequential lineups -- where the witness looks at suspects or pictures one at a time -- were far better than simultaneous ones where the witness looks at a group at once.  There was a rush to codify this preference into rigid requirements.  Well, that may not be right.  Bradley Fikes reports in the San Diego Union Tribune on a study indicating, among other things "simultaneous lineups were, if anything, diagnostically superior to sequential lineups. These results suggest that recent reforms in the legal system, which were based on the results of older research, may need to be reevaluated."

Another important finding is that the witness's confidence at the first observation is an important indication of accuracy, much more so than the witness's demeanor at trial that juries must usually go on.