Anderson Cooper 360 -- "Lie Detector" hype

[nolehce]

Alert re Anderson Cooper 360 ( http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/ ) ...

Anybody plan to catch this report (scheduled for Wednesday, February 22, 2006, 10pm EST)?

The promo paragraph reads:

"Criminals don't stand a chance against lie detectors that can read their mind. How your brain can give you away. Tune in at 10 p.m. ET."

Mr. Cooper has been prone to hyperventilating coverage in the past and perhaps he will need to be set straight on the truth behind "lie detection."

I can't pass judgement until I view this piece, which I may not be able to -- just moved and no cable yet.

If anybody does see the piece, please follow up here. Thanks

[nolehce]

Just came across two postings on the Anderson Cooper 360 blog ( http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/ ) regarding the so-called "MRI lie detector test."

The postings follow (reversed in order from the order in which they were originally posted.)

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Liar, liar, brain on fire (Part I)

Remember that scene in the movie "Meet the Parents" where Robert De Niro gives his soon-to-be son-in-law, Ben Stiller, a lie detector test? Stiller's character is nervous and flunks the test even though he didn't really do anything wrong. Well, that's long been a problem with polygraph tests. They are pretty good at catching liars, but they sometimes wrongly accuse honest people too.

Now science is trying to come up with a better test. For tonight's show, we talked to two doctors at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who recently put 11 volunteers into an MRI machine and asked six of them to lie and five to tell the truth to a series of questions. The results are remarkable.

When the volunteers lied, twice as many parts of their brains were active -- about 14 unique areas. But when the volunteers told the truth, only seven areas of the brain were active. Turns out it takes much more concentration to lie and doctors can see the difference using an MRI machine.

The doctors are excited about their research, but stress it is still in the early stages. Nonetheless, I can think of a lot of situations in which this test would be pretty useful -- cheating spouses, criminals, lying politicians. I'll bet you can too.

Posted By Kelly Buzby, CNN Producer: 1:54 PM   22 Comments  | Add a Comment

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Liar, liar, brain on fire (Part II)

So I'm the correspondent on the "liar, liar" story and actually took the MRI lie detector test discussed in an earlier post.

The MRI can be pretty intimidating -- it's a huge machine and constantly makes banging noises. The sound made me think of a metal bat dropping on a cement floor, over and over again.

The doctors slid me into the machine and asked me a bunch of questions over the course of 40 minutes. As if on cue, my brain "lit up" every time I lied.

Then I took a good old-fashioned polygraph. I had to wear an inflated blood pressure cuff for the duration of the test -- about 10 minutes. I didn't really beat the test, but I could certainly mess with the results by changing my breathing and thinking about other stuff.

Both tests were very uncomfortable and I can see why neither has 100 percent accuracy. But the doctors at Temple are on to something. And they are fired up about the possibility of one day having a fool-proof lie-detector test.

Tell you the truth, the whole idea kind of freaks me out. I'm not too excited about someone being able to see inside my brain and read my thoughts. What do you think? Is a fool-proof lie detector a good or bad thing? Yes, you have to type it out, because we can't read your mind...yet.

Posted By Rob Marciano, CNN Correspondent: 3:25 PM   51 Comments  | Add a Comment

[EosJupiter]

AllegedLiar,

What is interesting is this information being put out by CNN (Communist News Network .... pardon the joke), TwoBlock and I had this discussion weeks ago. I did the research on the requirements to make this work, and the overhead costs alone to realize mass fMRI testing is extremely prohibitive. And as a tax payer I would be severely adverse to seeing my tax dollars going to this type of garbage. An update on my research, and from discussions with a very senior electrical engineer and scientist, and the initial reaction to the articles I sent to him. He took the articles seriously but returned comments that  Magnetic Radiation can be messed with and defused. He has yet to get back to me on what that exactly entails, but as I get the information I will post it here. But he is sure there are countermeasures or there will be.  Thanks for the post and I myself give no validity to Anderson Cooper in most cases.

Regards ...