As revealing as they are, these studies, which involve tightly controlled experiments, almost certainly understate the magnitude of noise in the real world of criminal justice. Real-life judges are exposed to far more information than what the study participants received in the carefully specified vignettes of these experiments. Some of this additional information is relevant, of course, but there is also ample evidence that irrelevant information, in the form of small and seemingly random factors, can produce major differences in outcomes.
