Original reporting and commentary about polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors."
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 …
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 …