Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
On Friday, 20 March 2009, AntiPolygraph.org received a communication from a lawyer for NCS Pearson, Inc. demanding the removal of a post from our message board that purports to list the first 75 questions of the 567-question Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Test 2 (MMPI-2). (A seemingly knowledgable poster on the message board maintains that the questions …
In an oral history posted on YouTube, musician Tom Henry recounts the story of how, as a young Navy seaman, he was caught with a pound of marijuana in his locker, but escaped punishment after fooling the lie detector: The technique Tom thought of for fooling the lie detector (dissociation) wasn’t very sophisticated. But it …
Israeli lie detector company Nemesysco has issued a press release responding to Professors Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda’s article, “Charlatanry in Speech Science: A Problem to Be Taken Seriously,” which laid bare in devastating detail the pseudoscientific nature of Nemesysco’s lie detection “technology.” It should be noted that Nemesysco’s press release opens with a misleading …
Alexis Madrigal writes for Wired.com about what is reportedly the first attempt to have fMRI lie detector results admitted in court: Defense attorneys are for the first time submitting a controversial next-generation lie-detection test as evidence in criminal court. In an upcoming juvenile-sex-abuse case in San Diego, the defense is hoping to get an fMRI …
Dee J. Hall reports for the Wisconson State Journal that “Dr.” E. Gary Baker, the faux Ph.D. who markets what he styles a “Digital Voice Stress Analyzer” to law enforcement agencies, has lost the Jefferson, Wisconsin Police Department as a customer: Jefferson police cancel training on voice-stress analyzer By DEE J. HALL 608-2523-6132 dhall@madison.com The …
You’ve heard of the polygraph. Now the US Government is seeking to develop a “smellograph.” UPI Homeland and National Security Editor Shaun Waterman reports that the Department of Homeland Security is funding a “proof of concept” study into whether odors emitted by the human body can be used to determine whether a person is lying: …
Amir Liberman, the founder of Nemesysco, an Israeli company that internationally markets voice based lie detectors that simply don’t work, successfully pressured an academic journal into withdrawing the Internet availability of a peer-reviewed article that exposes Liberman’s lie detection “technology” for the pseudoscientific flapdoodle that it is. The Article Swedish linguists Anders Eriksson and Francisco …
As has been discussed on the message board, Penn Jillette, the “bigger, louder half” of the magic and comedy duo Penn & Teller, has disclosed via Twitter that a forthcoming episode of the Emmy Award-winning Showtime series Penn & Teller Bullshit! will concern “the bullshit of lie detectors.” AntiPolygraph.org anticipates that this PTBS episode will …
Mike Ward, staff reporter for the Austin American-Statesman reports that — much to the horror of the state’s Public Safety Commission — the Texas Department of Public Safety has hired applicants who failed lie detector tests. Unfortunately, left out of the report is any mention of the fact that polygraphy has no scientific basis. The …
Although pre-employment polygraph screening of law enforcement officers is prohibited by law in the state of Massachusetts, such protection against the pseudoscience of polygraphy evidently ceases upon hiring. In the town of Dracut, some 40 police officers either have been polygraphed or face polygraphic interrogation regarding the disappearance in 2003 of a quantity of marijuana …