Progress In Brain-Based Lie Detection 84
A Cognitive Neuroscientist writes "A new study, led by Harvard Psychologist Joshua Greene and forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may represent progress on the front of using brain imaging techniques, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, to detect lies. According to Harvard's press release, Greene's is 'the first study to examine brain activity of people telling actual lies,' as opposed to prior studies in which subjects were merely instructed to lie. The results suggest that one key step in distinguishing honest from dishonest individuals may involve focusing on a small set of brain regions that are responsible for executive control and attention. However, given that the actual paper is yet to be published, it's unclear whether the study is prone to some of the methodological and interpretive complications that have recently plagued similar brain imaging studies."
Re:Indivual differences (Score:3, Insightful)
I see an arms race. Assuming Greene (whose papers in the past, like his dissertation, I haven't been impressed with) really was able to ethically create a circumstance where people truly lying and he knows it:
All that means is that he found a correlate of lying. The method used in his lie detector would exploit that correlation. But once this becomes common knowledge, people can figure out what kind of thinking would trip the lie detector, eventually rendering it useless, even assuming everything they claim is right.
Furthermore, the study would tell people how talk in a way that trips the lie detector, making it look like every statement is a lie, even the truthful statement of their own name. With that many false positives, it would no longer be reliable.
Mythbusted... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:New non-trusive lie detection method flawed? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back to savage beatings and waterboarding, I guess.
I don't see why having a working non-intrusive lie detection method would mean those things have to stop!
Truth and Lies ... acceptance and denial (Score:4, Insightful)
Truth and lies are simply a matter of acceptance and denial. Our perceptions of right and wrong are merely an assimilation of experiences in life. What is a lie for some is truth for others. Some people have mastered the notion of changing lies into truth and truth into lies in public, in private and even in their own hearts and minds.
Defeating such testing may well be as trivial as defeating traditional polygraph tests as they both rely on the same principle -- metabolic and other reactions in the body to the conflicts that reside in the brain when the logical loops result from the mix of truth and lie. I know that lawyers are especially skilful at transforming or even abandoning their own personal beliefs and convictions in order to serve the needs and interests of their clients. This is an art that can be learned by anyone with the patience to learn.
Re:Let's Pretend (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It takes WORK to lie. (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is apparently easier for a person to relate than a lie is.
Memories are easier for a person to relate than is made up stuff. That's part of the problem with eyewitnesses. After an event, their brain fills in the blanks of their memory, making a coherent narrative.
There was a long term study done where they asked people right after the challenger explosion, where they were. Then, years later, they asked about the same thing and compared results. Some people had completely different stories, or the details wrong, but they swore they knew what they had been doing.
If a defendant can convince himself that a story is true, no lie detector will be able to tell. There are drugs that are used in the treatment of PTSD that keep traumatic memories from being fixed in the brain. I could see someone taking one of these, doing a crime, then rehearsing over and over the alternate history. After the drugs wore off, the alternate history could become the truth in the defendant's brain.