Sam Harris on True Lie Detection

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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, … Read more

Scientific American on Truth Serum

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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?”

Why Mike Haubrich Won’t Take a Polygraph Test

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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.

Mumbai Attacker Reportedly Subjected to Polygraph “Testing” — “Truth Serum” to Follow

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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 … Read more

Polygrapher Versus Polygrapher in the UK

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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 on the two shows are engaged in a bitter defamation battle. Jerome Taylor reports

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

It is the kind of argument that could probably have been settled by the tools of their trade, but bosses at two of Britain’s major polygraph companies are choosing to deal with their differences in the High Court rather than opting for lie detectors.

On one side is Bruce Burgess, a 64-year-old polygraph expert whose company is used to identify love rats and maintenance shirkers for ITV’s The Jeremy Kyle Show. On the other side is Don Cargill, who conducts polygraphs for The Trisha Goddard Show, Five’s rival show to Kyle’s.

According to a writ filed in the High Court, Mr Burgess is suing his opposite number over a letter Mr Cargill allegedly wrote to the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom in which he reportedly said Mr Burgess had been sacked for incompetence from a government pilot to test sex offenders.

Mr Burgess claims he was never even hired for the government programme and has alleged that Mr Cargill was trying to discredit him because he obtained different results on a lie detector test they both conducted on the same person. Mr Burgess has now filed a defamation case for £50,000 against Mr Cargill in the High Court.

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Cruel Joke: U.S. Exports Polygraphy to Iraq

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AFP: An American solider sits strapped to a lie detector during a press conference in Baghdad's secure 'Green Zone'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 Iraqi governments — understand full well that the lie detector is a pseudoscientific sham. See Al-Qaeda Documentation on Lie Detection and The Myth of the Lie Detector for the proof.

Iraq turns to lie detectors to outsmart Al-Qaeda

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Faced with infiltration of state organs by wily insurgents and Al-Qaeda jihadists, Iraq’s government has turned to a detection method highly favoured by the United States — polygraphs.

The first eight officials of the defence and interior ministries to be trained by US experts in the use of sophisticated lie detection equipment graduated last month after a six-month course.

“It is vital that we ensure that our employees in key services are trustworthy,” General Hamier, of the national police force, said at a small graduation ceremony in Baghdad’s highly-fortified Green Zone.

“Until now we have made employees fill in questionnaires on paper, and then we questioned them. It is very easy to lie. But now (with the new equipment) that will be much more difficult,” said Hamier.

Because polygraphy has no scientific basis to begin with and is vulnerable to simple countermeasures, it is not at all clear that it will be much more difficult for liars to get hired by the Iraqi government. Making matters worse, polygraph screening is inherently biased against the most truthful persons and is likely to screen out the very kind of straight arrows the Iraqi government desperately needs.

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El Paso Police Chief Calls Polygraph a “Piece of Junk”

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El Paso Chief of Police Greg Allen
El Paso P.D. Chief Greg Allen

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 El Paso Police Department has dropped the use of polygraph exams — commonly known as lie detector tests — on police officers during internal investigations because the results were considered useless.

Until several months ago, the exams were used when complaints were filed against officers.

Police Chief Greg Allen, who was appointed police chief in late March, called the exams a “piece of junk” and the president of the police union said they are “garbage.”

In August, the El Paso City Council approved a new contract with the El Paso Municipal Officers Association that made it possible for an officer to request an independent polygraph examiner to administer the test, instead of one employed by the department, if the chief requests a polygraph test.

But the new administration of Chief Allen simply decided to not use them even though they are still an option.

Criminal suspects also have the option of taking a polygraph test, said police spokesman Officer Chris Mears.

The Police Department has three police officers who are certified to administer polygraph tests.

Both Allen and El Paso Municipal Police Officers Association President Robert “Bobby” Holguin said they have issues with the accuracy of polygraph tests.

Allen and Holguin are in good company. The consensus view among scientists is that polygraphy has no scientific basis.

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UK to Begin Mandatory Polygraph Screening of Some Sex Offenders

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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 in the community.

Results could affect how they are monitored, but the results will not be admissible as evidence in court.

An earlier voluntary pilot found that nearly 80% of lie detector tests prompted admissions from offenders.

Each test will last for about 90 minutes and will monitor a subject’s heart rate, sweating, brain activity and blood pressure while he or she is asked questions.

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Maryland Judge to Allow Polygraph Results as Evidence for Sentencing Purposes

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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

In an unusual ruling, a Baltimore County judge has given a convicted felon a chance to take a lie-detector test to prove that he did not try to kill his ex-girlfriend and her friend – a crime for which the man is serving 35 years in prison.

Although polygraph results generally are not permitted in criminal proceedings in state court, Circuit Judge Lawrence R. Daniels offered to let the man take the test while weighing whether to reduce the five-year prison sentence the judge imposed in a separate case for a probation violation after the defendant was convicted of attempted murder in the shootings of the two women.

“It’s the first I’ve ever heard of a polygraph being used like that,” said Abraham Dash, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School. “But sentencing is pretty much a subjective thing. … To me, it’s sort of the same kind of thing as if you admit your guilt and say you’re sorry, I’ll consider the apology in lowering your sentence.”

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An FBI Veteran Comments on the Pentagon’s Polygraph Push

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In “Paranoia in the Pentagon,” security consultant and 25-year FBI veteran Jim Dooley lampoons the Defense Intelligence Agency’s decision to greatly expand its polygraph screening program:

The Pentagon, speaking as a single scary voice, says that it needs more polygraph studios. They need them to catch the spies. What spies? The spies it just knows are everywhere, in the Army, in the Navy, in the CIA, and even in the ranks of the presumptive spy catchers, the FBI. Colonel Clousseau suspects no one, but he is no fool; everyone is a suspect.

I would say that The Pentagon is likely to get everything it wants, being the Pentagon, studios, machines, operators, especially operators, with all but the dentist’s chair contracted out. Too bad. In the gigantic incomprehensible incoherent mess of stuff the Pentagon gets, this idea falls flat in the zone of pernicious blunder.

It would be bad enough if it were just another example of security theater, similar to TSA airport screening. ‘That vial of suntan lotion, not that one miss, the one that says SPF 45, it’s too big.’ ‘No it’s not, it says 3 ounces right on it.’ ‘Are you telling me?’ ‘No, I guess I have a flight to catch, where can I throw it away.’

As it is, I don’t imagine that the Pentagon, which after is all there to conduct wars, is the most fun place to work. You never really know, though. I have a friend Lee who told me that the most fun he ever had was the year he spent flying Helicopters in Viet Nam. He showed me pictures of the bullet holes in the canopy of his Cobra to prove it. Whatever, however the work-a-day world once was in the Pentagon, the polygraph is about to make it a lot worse.

My own experience in the FBI with the polygraph was uniformly bad. One of the first substantial cases on which I worked was a kidnapping case. The kidnappers left some confusion as to where they wanted the ransom package dropped and we got it wrong. We dropped the package of money on top of some railroad workers who thought that it was their lucky night. Realizing our mistake we interviewed the workers who denied knowing anything about the money. The polygraph cleared them. Several weeks later, one of them confessed, implicating the other. Each one said that from the start the other one threatened to kill him if he said anything. I still don’t know which one I really believe.

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