Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
James Ewinger reports for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in “Judge OKs Lie Detector Tests in Sex Case”: With a Summit County judge’s decision to admit lie-detector evidence, a New York law student may end up setting legal precedent even before he takes a bar exam. Sahil Sharma, 26, is charged with a single count of …
In “Freed After 22 Years,” Jonathan Casiano and Mark Mueller of the Newark, New Jersey Star-Ledger report on the case of Byron Halsey, from whom it now appears police extracted a false confession to the molestation and brutal murder of two children after he wrongly failed a polygraph examination. DNA evidence exculpates Halsey and has …
WorldNetDaily.com reports in a story titled, “Polygraph for Sandy Berger to be Studied” Excerpt: A spokesman for President Bush says a demand by Republicans for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to follow through on former White House insider Sandy Berger’s promise to take a polygraph test regarding the classified documents he took from the National Archives …
Despite a 2003 finding by the National Academy of Sciences that “[polygraph testing’s] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies,” an internal memorandum to employees at Los Alamos National Laboratory posted on the blog, LANL: …
Historian Ken Alder discusses the nexus between America’s atomic weapons program and the lie detector in “America’s Two Gadgets: Of Bombs and Polygraphs,” Isis, 2007, 98:124-137.
In “DoD researches high-tech ways to find liars,” published on 28 April 2007 among in the Army Times, among other places, Associated Press reporter Susanne M. Schafer writes on current research at the Defense Academy for Credibility Research (DACA, the former Department of Defense Polygraph Institute): FORT JACKSON, S.C. — An eerie image of a …
On Tuesday, 10 April 2007, polygraph examiner Jack Trimarco was a guest on Los Angeles radio station KNX 1070’s “Money 101 with Bob McCormick” program. A half-hour, 27 mb MP3 podcast is available for download. Mr. Trimarco uttered a glaring falsehood about human physiology that stands in need of correction. About seven minutes into the …
History professor Ken Alder, author of The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession, was interviewed for episode 108 of Bat Segundo Show, an Internet podcast, which may be downloaded as a 30 mb MP3 file. A serious interview follows the (rather corny) comic introduction.
Following hard on the heels of NBC Dateline’s shameful use of the lie detector as a ratings gimmick, syndicated television news program Inside Edition will today feature a polygraph “test” of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s husband, Frederic von Anhalt, regarding his claim that he might be the father of the late Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn. …
[Updated Monday, 9 April 2007] In a journalistic nadir, NBC Dateline on Sunday, 8 April 2007 presented a story, “Diane Zamora: ‘I’m Not a Killer,’” prominently featuring the results of a polygraph “test” that Dateline arranged for Zamora, a former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman who is serving a life sentence for murder in a Texas …