Computer Voice Stress Analysis (CVSA) is a pseudoscientific “lie detector” marketed to government agencies by the so-named National Institute of Truth Verification (NITV) in West Palm Beach, Florida. Although NITV has admitted in court that “CVSA is not capable of lie detection,” in marketing its Emperor’s-new-clothes “technology,” it continues to claim that CVSA is “over 98% accurate.”
Dektor Corporation of Coopersburg, Pennsylvania, a sole proprietorship owned by Arthur Herring III, markets a competing pseudoscientific voice-based “lie detector” called the Psychological Stress Evaluator (PSE).
On 27 July 2018, NITV filed a federal lawsuit against Dektor and Herring alleging “false advertisement, unfair competition, and product disparagement under the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1125(a)” and “deceptive and unfair trade practices under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act” and seeking a total of $4,080,000 in claimed damages.
During the pendency of the lawsuit, Herring established a website titled “NITV CVSA Lies Exposed” (nitvcvsaexposed.com) documenting alleged dishonesty by NITV. For example, Herring convincingly shows that NITV founder “Dr.” Charles Humble’s doctoral degree was issued by an unaccredited diploma mill called “Indiana Christian University.” Humble has used the unearned title of “Dr.” in marketing NITV’s products and services.
Herring also points out that the “Journal of Criminalistics and Court Expertise” that NITV claims published a research study showing that “the accuracy rate of the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer…is greater than 95%” is unknown to the Library of Congress.
Herring’s website has a great deal of additional, apparently true documentation about Charles Humble and NITV that is of considerable public interest.
However, on Friday, 17 May 2019, U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Lee Brannon granted NITV a default judgment ordering, among other things, that Herring “immediately remove from public view/unpublish the www.NITVCVSAexposed.com website in its entirety.”
A mirror of the banned website as it appeared on 18 May 2019 is available on Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
It should be recalled that in 2006, ABC Primetime did an in-depth exposé on “Dr.” Charles Humble and the “National Institute for Truth Verification”:
Wow, so much for the free market concept.
[…] is available on Archive.org’s mirror of NITVCVSAExposed.com, a website that in May 2019 was ordered taken down pursuant to a federal lawsuit brought by NITV against Arthur Herring III and Dektor […]
I did the PSE course with Dektor in 1970’s. I liked it. We did use it a lot for an investigation tool with a lot of success. This is my 60th year.
Allan
Any voice stress device has around a 50% reliability rate. Any success you might have had has to do with an examinee being duped into believing the so called lie device is a valid science, not a fallacy.
It nothing but junk science, it’s truly no better than flipping a coin. It nothing but a scam that a lot of law enforcement agencies bought into, because they never did any research on the technology or the fake Dr.
Right Stephen. While “Dr.” Humble evidently does not have the intellectual horsepower to earn anything above an Associate’s degree, thus having to buy a fake Ph.D, he does understand that government bureaucrats will never allow a bunch of facts and research to get in the way of a perfectly good assumption.
Basically, fake credentials, fake “studies” in fake peer reviewed periodicals has been an effective marketing ploy.
However, sooner or later, a smart opposing attorney representing a fired worker, or a candidate that was not hired because of a “failed” CVSA is going to get an CVSA analyst on the stand and ask him or her a stream of questions. Basically, a smart attorney will find some way to enter the admittance of NITV after the Crowe case that the CVSA does not work, and contrast that will that with the claimed 98% accuracy rate.
I find it ironic that the downfall of NITV has to do with telling the truth on fraudster “Dr.” E. Gary Baker and losing a massive and very expensive lawsuit rather than decades of defrauding ignorant criminal justice workers and bureaucrats.