Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
With less than a week remaining before President George W. Bush leaves office, controversial Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury on Wednesday, 14 January 2009 issued a legal opinion finding that a memorandum from President Lyndon B. Johnson to the heads of departments and agencies prohibiting use of the polygraph in the Executive …
Neuroscientist Sam Harris answers the Edge Foundation’s annual question for 2009, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” with a commentary titled “True Lie Detection.” Excerpt: When evaluating the social cost of deception, one must consider all of the misdeeds — marital infidelities, Ponzi schemes, premeditated murders, terrorist atrocities, …
Science writer Brendan Borrell, prompted by reports that Mumbai gunman Azam Amir Kasab will be injected with “truth serum” by his Indian interrogators, examines the history of this discredited interrogation technique for Scientific American in a timely article titled, “What Is Truth Serum?”
In “Why I Refuse Polygraphs,” blogger Mike Haubrich relates the entertaining story of his experience with the polygraph while working as a delivery man for Domino’s Pizza in the early 1980s. Haubrich became a criminal suspect when a customer at a college dormitory reported having lost her wallet about the time Haubrich delivered a pizza.
CNN reports that the lone gunman reportedly taken alive in the recent attack on Mumbai, India has been subjected to a polygraph test: [Mumbai Joint Police Commissioner of Crime Rakesh] Maria identified the suspect as Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, from Faridkot village in the Okara district of Pakistan’s Punjab province. He is the son of …
In a case that calls to mind Grogan v. Paolella et al. in the US, a polygrapher in the UK has sued a fellow polygrapher for defamation. The Independent’s Jerome Taylor reports: Lie detectors at war (but who’s telling the truth?) It’s not just Jeremy Kyle and Trisha Goddard who are rivals: the polygraph experts …
In an article titled, “Iraq Turns to Lie Detectors to Outsmart Al-Qaeda,” Agence France Presse (AFP) reports on the graduation of the first class of U.S. Government-trained Iraqi polygraph operators. But to outsmart Al-Qaeda, doesn’t one need to be smarter than Al-Qaeda? As AntiPolygraph.org has documented, Al-Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents — unlike the U.S. and …
Speaking in unusually blunt terms for a senior law enforcement official, El Paso, Texas chief of police Greg Allen has decried the polygraph as a “piece of junk,” while El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association president Bobby Holguin has pronounced it “garbage.” Adriana M. Chávez reports for the El Paso Times: EL PASO — The …
BBC News reports: Sex offenders to face lie tests Sex offenders in some parts of England and Wales could be made to take compulsory lie detector tests to see if they are still a danger to the public. The Ministry of Justice said a pilot scheme would test the use of polygraphs for offenders living …
Jennifer McMenamin reports for the Baltimore Sun on Baltimore County associate judge Lawrence Robert Daniels‘s decision to take polygraph results into account when considering sentencing of a convicted felon: Lie detector may aid inmate Baltimore Co. judge gives convict chance to prove he didn’t try to kill two women By Jennifer McMenamin August 28, 2008 …