 The Nemesysco lie detector – click pic for website |
If scientific research can be censored like happened in this article because it might hurt a business’ business, then by extension there is no way to protect the public from charlatans and scam artists whose business would be harmed by proving their wares are fake.
One year ago, Francisco Lacerda, a professor of linguistics at Stockholm University, and Anders Eriksson, professor of phonetics at the University of Gothenburg, published an article in the International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, a magazine for voice experts working for the police and security services. The article entitled “Charlatantry in forensic speech science” gave an overview of the last fifty years of research in the field of lie detectors. The article’s conclusion is that there is no scientific evidence to show that lie detectors actually work.
Article withdrawn
In the autumn, Equinox, the British publisher of the magazine, were canvassed by the Israeli company Nemesysco Limited, a manufacturer of lie detectors. Following this the company demanded that the article be withdrawn, which the publishers duly did. In the online version of the journal only an abstract of the article is now available, along with a clarification from the publisher.“It is incredibly serious that they are trying to silence us in this way. I have never heard of anything like it. We have apparently damaged their business,” says Francisco Lacerda to the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
The article was aimed directly at the company’s lie detector patent,” said Francisco Lacerda to Dagens Nyheter, “We showed that the invention cannot work. The article had a journalistic tone and was rather provocatively written. We wanted to prove that the technology behind the lie detector is a scam.”
Publisher faced with threat of prosecution
In a letter to the publisher Nemesysco’s lawyers wrote that the authors of the article could be sued for defamation if they wrote on the subject again. The publishers accepted the lawyers’ angle on the article, “We would like to warn the authors that they should not publish the article in another forum and that if they send in a similar article to another journal, they can be sued for defamation,” writes the publisher, cited by Dagens Nyheter.
The threat of defamation hangs over everyone’s head every day. Proving it is another thing and usually, courts will allow the victor to pick up that cost from the loser.
This action (reaction?) from the Israeli company is typical of, ehm, Israeli companies. Scare the persons that think differently, intimidate them, terrorize them, and try to make them run for their life. I know, I have been the subject of such strategy.
The fact that “lie detectors” don’t react on lies so much as stress has been known for decades.
I would turn the legal process back on them. Find a way to get the paper introduced in court proceedings. Then we could all see it.
I had a psychology professor quite a while back explain how to beat a lie detector test.
It’s simple. Simply train your body to react when given the control questions. Like how an actor can cry on que, condition yourself to exhibit “stress” when asked the control questions.
The control questions are questions which are obviously true and false. Now if you show a good bit of equal stress during both the “true” and “false” questions, then the examiner will have nothing to compare your subsequent answers against.
Therefore, the test fails.
(This is anonymous, isn’t it??)
Does anybody actually take lie detectors seriously anymore?
#6: TV shows and movies.
1 – Defamation would need to be proven, as in they would have to prove that what Lacerda and Erikkson provided was FALSE. This would force the article into court records as evidence.
2 – Lacerda and Erikkson could EASILY get this published, they just have to not DIRECTLY point a finger at Nemesysco, and generalize the corporations.
3 – Lie detectors are usually inadmissable in court due to their high failure rate, often proven out by years of actual forensic science.
4 – Are lie detectors the Israeli tobacco firms?
Israelis think everyone else is a Palestinian and treats them accordingly.
As a device lie detectors don’t work. It’s the way they are used that can work. Almost everybody that takes the test is told that they have failed. “We know you are lying so you’d better start telling us the truth.” Some people when squeezed this way will give up information.
Lie detector technology seems like something from Mesmer would have created.
Don’t we have much better technology now?
#11, Greg,
Yes. But torture is also unreliable plus it has the downside of being illegal.
What rubbish. I’d say go ahead and sue, and see how far you get. Then again, it’s Britain, so who know what sort of legal mumbo jumbo might transpire at trial.
Publish in a US or Canadian journal, then let them sue.
I actually took a lie detector test waaaaaay back in about 1981. I didn’t try to beat it, as I had nothing to hide and was completely innocent. Another employee….(this was all about employee theft) was in fact guilty of theft and did not do well on the test. But I can easily understand how they can be both inaccurate, fooled and used to intimidate the subject into a confession.
Has there ever been a television/movie script where someone fooled a lie detector?
The machine isn’t the lie detector, it’s the person operating it. The machine is really just monitoring the subjects vital signs. The operator interprets the information from the machine vs. what the subject has said after each question if the person is lying. The machine is self makes no judgment calls.
Lie detectors are unscientific. They serve as an intimidation device, and are so unreliable as a truth detector they cannot be used in court.
#13 “Has there ever been a television/movie script where someone fooled a lie detector?”
Many, my favorite was an old episode of Barney Miller, where Det. Dietrich under a lie detector said he was a space alien, and the lie detector said he was telling the truth.
You should NEVER agree to a lie detector test. there are more false positives (says you are lying when you aren’t) than false negatives detected. At best they are 90% accurate, and depend heavily on the person running the test.
Yet another reason I glad I don’t live in Europe.
Stockholm and Gothenburg are two of the oldest Universities in the World. If this paper came out of a realtor college in Florida, I might have my doubts.
I read about a case where some detectives hooked some wires to a metal colander, put the other end of the wires in a photocopier, and brought a suspect in. They put the colander on his head and told him it was a lie detector.
On the glass plate of the copy machine they put a note with the word “False” printed on it. Every time they asked the suspect a question, a detective would hit the “copy” button and the “lie detector” would spit out a piece of paper saying “False”.
The suspect freaked out and confessed.
It’s not the machine, it is the operators that do the magic.
Uri Geller screamed and sued before he was finally proven to be a fake.
What they should do is retitle the article to say that lie detectors work, but leave the content and the results exactly as they are, proving that they don’t. The lawyers never read the whole thing anyway.
F*ck Israel; just one more thing to boycott.
>> Mr. Fusion said, on May 8th, 2009 at 8:24 am
>> #11, Greg,
>> Yes. But torture is also unreliable plus it has the downside of being illegal.
Torture is not a new technology.
Torture a barbaric, sadistic crime from the Middle Ages.
At least lie detectors are from the 19th century!
But c’mon. Science has advanced so much — isn’t there a more reliable technology or method to determine if someone is lying?
I’ve know “polygraphs” were the bunk, for years. And I’ve always wonder why the US government never subjected them to tests by Standards and Measures, the way they do so many other things the government uses. The FBI and CIA supposedly used them for years to check up on their agents. But of course, they completely missed out on finding some quite notorious (and really not that clever) traitorous agents. Proving they’re a complete waste of time and money. But by never subjecting these devices and their operating methods, to any scientific testing. They’ve preserved their sales of them, for years. Movie and Tv shows also keep showing them as effective. Especially some recent “reality” show. Which was totally staged “reality”. They edited out the times when things didn’t quite work. Just as all “reality” programs do, BTW.
Another similar bogus device is the dianetics e-meter. Which is just a fancy “galvanic response” device. That’s not even designed to measure anything in an accurate way. If you can keep the meter needle center, you’re brain is unaffected by the evil spirits, or whatever. But publish any criticism about it, and you know who will sue the pants off of you. Because, apparently, even the truth about something is a patentable commodity.
These clowns were so damn lazy, that they kept on selling the old “ink pens in a metal suitcase” model, for years. Even though laptop PC had become plentiful. And could have replaced the older model long ago. In fact you can probably still buy to old metal suitcase type. Though it has no software to do any “analyst” of the data. Relying strictly on the operator’s subject judgment on what’s a truthful reaction.
I was once offered a job, a shopping mall. But only if I took a polygraph first. I refused, so I didn’t get to sell stereos and Tv set there. Later, I found out it was a front for a drug dealer, who hope he filter out any undercover cops, with the test. But either this didn’t work, or one of his employees ratted him out. since then, the law was changed so employers couldn’t use such a tests. Unless of course, it’s the FBI. Dumb!
Supposedly we’re living in the 21th century. When everything is scientifically proven and effective. And there’s no more room for superstition and fakery. Haa! So why do we have Tv shows like “Medium” and “Ghost Whisperer”? And the number of fortunetellers has doubled in my town (or their homes have gotten bigger). Where’s the John Stossel report, exposing these fakes? Or these lie detectors?
I still remember one late even Tv magazine ran a test of them, a decade ago. And showed how their operators were, usually willing to bias the tests to meet the client’s expectations. But that late evening expose probably didn’t get much notice. And was never repeated. I don’t think it was 20/20. It might have been Dateline, or something else. It definitely wasn’t 60 Minutes. Cowards.
An eminent englishman (in the 19th century) said “The law is an ass” and he was right insofar as in England at least it can produce some pretty strange outcomes – of which this whole thing about lie detectors is one.
The worst part of the problem though is the sheer cost of defending oneself if anything goes to court. Even if one wins one can be bankrupted, and that is why a company with enough dosh can so easily scare any individual or smaller company, as happened in this case.
I don’t know if the situation in the USA is the same as in Britain, but I would be surprised if it is any different.
Innocent or not, Lie detectors are not your friend. You could be completely innocent, tell the truth and still fail the lie detector.