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The truth about lie detection
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Truth about lie detection Why waste money on technology when humans can still do better? IF YOU want to spot a liar, don’t techniques to spot the supposed bother with a polygraph. They telltale signs of dishonesty – are notoriously unreliable. In a increased heart rate, sweating, competition to find the world’s nervous tics, averted gaze most inappropriately named and so on. The US Department technology, the lie detector of Homeland Security, for would be hard to beat. example, is spending millions Yet lie detectors are still relied on a system to detect “malintent” upon to a frightening extent. in airline passengers to weed out Law enforcement agencies in potential terrorists. the US, Canada, Israel and “With a little training elsewhere use them routinely in psychology and in investigations, even though interrogation people can evidence based on lie detectors rumble liars accurately” is usually inadmissible in court. Where it is admissible, miscarriages of justice can follow. And yet the assumption that Even where it is not, it is plausible anxiety causes liars to give that the use of polygraphs leads themselves away is dubious. A to innocent people being jailed 2003 review of the evidence by by wrongly convincing the police the US National Academy of that they have their culprit. Sciences concluded that while Dissatisfaction with traditional lie detectors are significantly polygraphs has prompted the better than a toss of a coin, they search for more sophisticated fall far short of the accuracy
required. Little has changed. Even worse, brain-scanning techniques are being drafted in to detect what you might call the “neural correlates of lying”, even though many neuroscientists doubt such a thing exists. Fortunately, there are reliable ways to spot liars (see page 46). And you don’t need fancy techniques to do it – the human brain works just fine. With a little training in psychology and interrogation, people can be taught to rumble liars with great accuracy. Uncovering lies is crucial to the justice system and national security. Instead of wasting money on technologies that are little better than guesswork, law enforcement should be investing more in people. Those who still have faith in lie detectors are simply lying to themselves. n
Rise of the reverse cyborg THE idea of the cyborg dates back as least as far as Edgar Allen Poe. In an 1839 short story, he told the tale of a wounded war veteran whose body was rebuilt using synthetic parts, including the “handsomest pair of whiskers under the sun”. Other writers have imagined a similar future, albeit with less emphasis on facial hair. The idea proved prescient – think
hearing aids and pacemakers, for example. Indeed, even the fantasy of intelligent brain-implants may become real: researchers are devising electronics to revive lost memories (see page 14). But let’s not forget that machines are increasingly reaching out to us for help too. Engineers building artificial intelligence, such as image-
recognition apps for smartphones, are now giving their software the ability to ask humans for help. Crowdsourcing internet sites like Mechanical Turk make this possible, along with everything from translation to navigation. One consequence is that we need to change the way we think about cyborgs. As our feature on page 42 reports, these hybrids are already with us. The cyborg future has arrived, just not by the route that we had expected. n
Medical will come to mean personal
would boom in its wake, and much has since been made of how the reality has yet to live up to the hype, despite the relentless fall in the cost of genome sequencing. But to shift from “medicine for all” to a truly tailored approach means more than applied genetics. On page 6 we report how “organs on chips”, from hearts to brains,
are being interconnected with a view to creating a micro model of a patient. Meanwhile, the Virtual Physiological Human project forges on, hoping one day to simulate an individual patient’s response to a therapy. Personalised medicine is by no means in the doldrums – it’s growing up in all kinds of novel, fascinating ways. n
FORMER US president Bill Clinton called the newly sequenced human genome the “most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind”. Much was made of how personalised medicine
25 June 2011 | NewScientist | 3
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 2666 Fax +61 2 9422 2633 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 to SUBSCRIbe UK and International Tel +44 (0) 8456 731 731 [email protected] The price of a New Scientist annual subscription is UK £143, Europe €228, USA $154, Canada C$182, Rest of World $293. Postmaster: Send address changes to New Scientist, PO Box 3806, Chesterfield, MO 63006-9953, USA. cONTACTS Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Who’s who newscientist.com/people Contact us newscientist.com/contact Enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] Permission for reuse [email protected] Media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 Marketing Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1286 Back Issues & Merchandise Tel +44 (0) 1733 385170 Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588 UK Newsagents Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8148 3333 © 2011 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Truth about lie detection Why waste money on technology when humans can still do better? IF YOU want to spot a liar, don’t techniques to spot the supposed bother with a polygraph. They telltale signs of dishonesty – are notoriously unreliable. In a increased heart rate, sweating, competition to find the world’s nervous tics, averted gaze most inappropriately named and so on. The US Department technology, the lie detector of Homeland Security, for would be hard to beat. example, is spending millions Yet lie detectors are still relied on a system to detect “malintent” upon to a frightening extent. in airline passengers to weed out Law enforcement agencies in potential terrorists. the US, Canada, Israel and “With a little training elsewhere use them routinely in psychology and in investigations, even though interrogation people can evidence based on lie detectors rumble liars accurately” is usually inadmissible in court. Where it is admissible, miscarriages of justice can follow. And yet the assumption that Even where it is not, it is plausible anxiety causes liars to give that the use of polygraphs leads themselves away is dubious. A to innocent people being jailed 2003 review of the evidence by by wrongly convincing the police the US National Academy of that they have their culprit. Sciences concluded that while Dissatisfaction with traditional lie detectors are significantly polygraphs has prompted the better than a toss of a coin, they search for more sophisticated fall far short of the accuracy
required. Little has changed. Even worse, brain-scanning techniques are being drafted in to detect what you might call the “neural correlates of lying”, even though many neuroscientists doubt such a thing exists. Fortunately, there are reliable ways to spot liars (see page 46). And you don’t need fancy techniques to do it – the human brain works just fine. With a little training in psychology and interrogation, people can be taught to rumble liars with great accuracy. Uncovering lies is crucial to the justice system and national security. Instead of wasting money on technologies that are little better than guesswork, law enforcement should be investing more in people. Those who still have faith in lie detectors are simply lying to themselves. n
Rise of the reverse cyborg THE idea of the cyborg dates back as least as far as Edgar Allen Poe. In an 1839 short story, he told the tale of a wounded war veteran whose body was rebuilt using synthetic parts, including the “handsomest pair of whiskers under the sun”. Other writers have imagined a similar future, albeit with less emphasis on facial hair. The idea proved prescient – think
hearing aids and pacemakers, for example. Indeed, even the fantasy of intelligent brain-implants may become real: researchers are devising electronics to revive lost memories (see page 14). But let’s not forget that machines are increasingly reaching out to us for help too. Engineers building artificial intelligence, such as image-
recognition apps for smartphones, are now giving their software the ability to ask humans for help. Crowdsourcing internet sites like Mechanical Turk make this possible, along with everything from translation to navigation. One consequence is that we need to change the way we think about cyborgs. As our feature on page 42 reports, these hybrids are already with us. The cyborg future has arrived, just not by the route that we had expected. n
Medical will come to mean personal
would boom in its wake, and much has since been made of how the reality has yet to live up to the hype, despite the relentless fall in the cost of genome sequencing. But to shift from “medicine for all” to a truly tailored approach means more than applied genetics. On page 6 we report how “organs on chips”, from hearts to brains,
are being interconnected with a view to creating a micro model of a patient. Meanwhile, the Virtual Physiological Human project forges on, hoping one day to simulate an individual patient’s response to a therapy. Personalised medicine is by no means in the doldrums – it’s growing up in all kinds of novel, fascinating ways. n
FORMER US president Bill Clinton called the newly sequenced human genome the “most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind”. Much was made of how personalised medicine
25 June 2011 | NewScientist | 3