Discovery channel aired a show tonight 3-25-04 called "More Than Human" where they conducted a mock test to see who could detect lies better... a 3 person panel of humans (astrologist, fbi agent, professional poker player) or a combination polygraph/voice stress/eye analyzer.

Each person on each team had to decide on which questions (25 in all) the person was lying on, here are the results:

Polygraph - was only correct on 16/25
Voice stress - was only correct on 21/25
Eye - I didn't write this one down, 16/25?

FBI agent on panel - 17/25
Professional poker player - 17/25
Astrologist - I didn't write this one down,something like 10/25

This just goes to show you that whether it's a polygraph, voice stress, eye analyzer, fbi agent, poker player, or astrologist... they can't detect whether you're lying and it's nothing more than 50/50.

This episode of More Than Human is titled, "What's on Your Mind?":

http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/episode.jsp?episode=0&cpi=24292&gid=11490&channel=DSC

It will be re-aired on 26 and 28 March 2004 at 1:00 PM Eastern:

http://dsc.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?series=24292&gid=11490

I did not see the show, but would note that the accuracies you reported are somewhat better than 50/50. For example, 16/25 correct calls for the polygraph equals 64% correct, and 17/25 correct calls for the FBI agent and poker player equals 68% correct.

The National Academy of Sciences noted in its report, The Polygraph and Lie Detection, that  there is essentially no evidence on the additive validity of polygraphy (its ability to add predictive value to that which can be achieved by other means). The results obtained in this More Than Human experiment seem to be consistent with this.

The astrologer who took part in the experiment is one "Dr." Louis Turi, who offers the following excuse for his poor performance:


Quote:

The Production Company's management arranged transportation and accommodations at the Hilton for all their guests, and paid us for our time and expertise. Unlike many shows that I plan, at this one I could not control the taping dates. Like 99% of the rest of the world, the producers do not possess cosmic consciousness and any endeavors performed after a full moon can only mean trouble or unplanned, unsuspected and annoying happenings....

Does anyone know the names of the polygraph and voice stress operators who appeared on the show?

wrote on Mar 27^th, 2004 at 12:47pm:

Does anyone know the names of the polygraph and voice stress operators who appeared on the show?

The Polygraph operator was Ray Lara[originally posted as Lark]. The LVA operator was Tom Winscher. The subject was John Pullum, a professional mentalist.

Ray had the bad luck that his three Q's were answered in the affirmative - including an obvious control. Talk about being flustered....

The show, "More than Human", was quite entertaining but there were many obvious flaws in the procedures - which the show acknowledged.

-Marty