U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff Derides Polygraphy as “Junk Science”

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Kat Richardson reports for The Dartmouth on Judge Jed S. Rakoff’s remarks at his recent William H. Timber ‘37 Lecture, which was co-sponsored by the Dartmouth Legal Studies faculty and the Dartmouth Lawyers Association. Excerpt: Science and the law are “uncomfortable” but inevitable “bedfellows,” Jed Rakoff, a U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of … Read more

Warning to U.S. Troops on Hand-Held Lie Detector

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AntiPolygraph.org’s George Maschke addresses members of the U.S. armed forces who are being asked to rely on DoD’s new hand-held lie detector, the “Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System” (PCASS): For discussion of the PCASS, see Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System: U.S. Deploys Hand-Held Lie Detector and How to Beat the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System … Read more

U.S. Military to Deploy Hand-Held Lie Detectors

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Bill Dedman of MSNBC shines much-needed light on the U.S. military’s new “Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System” or PCASS. His on-line report, “New Anti-Terror Weapon: Hand-Held Lie Detector” is a must-read and includes documentation obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and a video segment with interviews and a demonstration conducted at the Defense Academy … Read more

U.S. Foists Lie Detectors on Iraqi Government

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Although the U.S. National Academy of Sciences roundly rejected polygraph screening as pseudoscience in a landmark 2002 report, the U.S. Government continues to swear by it. Now the U.S. military in Iraq is soliciting bids to train Iraqi government agencies in the black art of lie detection, as Sharon Weinberger of Wired’s “Danger Blog” reports … Read more

State Department Orders Polygraph Tests in Passport Records Investigation

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Washington Times reporters Bill Gertz and Jon Ward write that the State Department is resorting to the use of lie detectors in its investigation into improper access of the passport records of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain. But reliance on a pseudoscientific test that is easily passed using simple countermeasures suggests … Read more

Bioethicist Jonathan Marks Raises Concerns About fMRI-based “Lie Detectors” and Coercive Interrogations

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Penn State Live reports on concerns raised by Dr. Jonathan Marks about the premature adoption of fMRI-based lie detectors:

High tech interrogations may promote abuse
Monday, March 17, 2008

University Park, Pa. – There is evidence that brain imaging technology is being used to interrogate suspected terrorists despite concerns that it may not be reliable, and that it might inadvertently promote abuse of detainees, according to a Penn State researcher. He says the risk that such technology could license further abuse of detainees remains ever present, given President Bush’s March 8 veto of legislation that would have prohibited the CIA from conducting aggressive interrogations.

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Nebraska Polygrapher Charles O’Callaghan Named in Federal Lawsuit

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Charles O’Callaghan, a polygraph examiner and Nebraska State Patrol investigator, has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska by Matthew Livers, from whom investigators coerced a false confession after an allegedly failed polygraph examination conducted by O’Callaghan, who is also a member of the Nebraska Association of Polygraph Examiners.

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