Posted on 01/29/2006 10:11:30 AM PST by neverdem
Associated Press
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Picture this: Your boss is threatening to fire you because he thinks you stole company property. He doesn't believe your denials. Your lawyer suggests you deny it one more time, in a brain scanner that will show you're telling the truth.
Wacky? Science fiction? It might happen this summer.
Just the other day I lay flat on my back as a scanner probed the tiniest crevices of my brain and a computer screen asked, "Did you take the watch?"
And two outfits, Cephos and No Lie MRI, say they'll start offering brain scans for lie detection later this year.
"I'd use it tomorrow in virtually every criminal and civil case on my desk" to check the truthfulness of clients, said attorney Robert Shapiro, best known for defending O.J. Simpson against murder charges.
Shapiro advises entrepreneur Steven Laken and has a financial interest in Cephos, which Laken founded to commercialize the brain-scanning work at the Medical University of South Carolina. That's where I got scanned.
The technology is called functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. It's a standard tool for studying the brain, but research into using it to detect lies is in the early stages. Nobody knows whether it will prove more accurate than polygraphs, which measure things such as blood pressure and breathing rate to look for signals of lying.
But advocates of fMRI say it has the potential to be more accurate, because it zeros in on the source of lying, the brain, rather than using indirect measures. So it may someday provide lawyers with something polygraphs can't: legal evidence of truth-telling that's widely admissible in court. (Courts generally regard polygraph results as unreliable.)
Laken said he's aiming to offer the fMRI service for use in situations such as libel, slander and fraud where it's one person's word against another, and perhaps in employee screening by government agencies. Attorneys suggest it would be more useful in civil rather than most criminal cases, he said.
The last sanctuary
The idea of using scanners to detect lies has started a buzz among scientists, legal experts and ethicists. Unlike perusing your mail or tapping your phone, this is "looking inside your brain," Hank Greely, a law professor who directs the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences, said a few days before my scan.
It "does seem to me to be a significant change in our ability ... to invade what has been the last untouchable sanctuary, the contents of your own mind," Greely said. "It should make us stop and think to what extent we should allow this to be done."
But Dr. Mark George, the neurologist and psychiatrist who let me lie in his scanner and be grilled by his computer, said he doesn't see a privacy problem.
That's because it's impossible to test people without their consent, he said. Subjects have to cooperate so fully — holding the head still, and reading and responding to the questions, for example — that they have to agree to the scan.
"It really doesn't read your mind if you don't want your mind to be read," he said. "If I were wrongly accused and this were available, I'd want my defense lawyer to help me get this."
George and colleagues recently reported that the technology detected lies in 28 of 31 volunteers. I joined an extension of that study.
That's why I ended up in George's fMRI scanner, focused on questions popping up on a computer screen.
Some were easy: Am I awake, is it 2004, do I like movies? Others were more challenging: Have I cheated on taxes, or gossiped, or deceived a loved one? As instructed, I answered them all truthfully, pushing the "Yes" button with my thumb or the "No" button with my index finger.
Then: "Did you remove a watch from the drawer?"
Just a half-hour or so before, in an adjacent room, I'd been told to remove either a watch or a ring from a drawer and slip it into a locker. This was the mock crime the study used. So I took the watch. In the scanner I remembered seizing its gold metal band and nestling it into the locker.
So, the computer was asking, did I take the watch?
No, I replied with a jab of my finger.
I lied again and again when asked if I'd taken the watch but replied truthfully when asked about the ring.
It would be a different computer's job to figure out which I was lying about, the watch or the ring. It would compare the way my brain acted when I responded to those questions versus what my brain did when I responded to routine questions truthfully. Whichever looked more different from the "truthful" brain activity would be considered the signature of deceit.
The computer asked 160 questions in 16 minutes; actually, it was 80 questions two times apiece. The verdict would take a few days, since it required a lot of data analysis.
In a real-world interrogation, George said, the subject of the questioning would go through an exercise such as the ring-or-watch task as well as being quizzed about the topic at hand. That way, if the computer failed in the experimental task, it would be obvious that it couldn't judge the person's truthfulness.
Accuracy and coercion
But ethical and legal experts said they were wary of quickly applying fMRI to lie detection.
"What's really scary is if we start implementing this before we know how accurate it really is," Greely said. "People could be sent to jail, people could be sent to the death penalty, people could lose their jobs."
Judy Illes, director of Stanford's program in neuroethics, also has concerns: Could people, including victims of crimes, be coerced into taking an fMRI test? Could it distinguish accurate memories from muddled ones? Could it detect a person who's being misleading without actually lying?
Her worries multiply if fMRI evidence starts showing up in the courtroom. For example, unlike the technical data from a polygraph, it can be used to make brain images that look simple and convincing, belying the complexity of the data behind them, she said.
"You show a jury a picture with a nice red spot, that can have a very strong impact in a very rapid way ... We need to understand how juries are going to respond to that information. Will they be open to complex explanations of what the images do and do not mean?"
Put to the test
It didn't take any jury to find the truth in my case. "It wasn't even a close call," George said.
The three parts of my brain the technique targets became more active when I lied about taking the watch than when I truthfully denied taking the ring.
Those areas are involved in juggling the demands of doing several things at once, in thinking about oneself and in stopping oneself from making a natural response, all things the brain apparently does when it pulls back from blurting the truth and works up a whopper instead, George said.
Nobody is going to make me or anybody else climb into an fMRI scanner every time they want a statement verified. The procedure is too cumbersome to be used so casually, George said.
But he figures that if a perfect lie detector were developed, that practical consideration might not matter. The mere knowledge that one is available, he said, might make a difference.
"My hope," George said, "would be that it might make the world operate a little bit more openly and honestly."
I don't believe polygraphs, I'm not gonna buy this.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!
Okey dokey, so how does it distinguish between those who believe their lies and those who feel guilty when innocent?
Thanks for the link!
Even at this device's estimated 90% accuracy it would still be problematic. Until we reach the accuracy levels of DNA testing, this should never be allowed in court. 1/10 being wrong is not that great.
The National Socialists used to measure people's skulls to determine their viability...
Hmmmm...
You're welcome. I thought this was an interesting article and you'd like to see additional comments. Something coming to a scan near you, perhaps?
They exist. I've seen them.
Oh, you don't trust them....
...nevermind.
Don't be surprised with where they take this technology. Eventually, I believe a case on its admissability as evidence will go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Men hungrier for revenge than women, brain scan study reveals
Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of others The last link is the Nature article in a pdf format that's the basis for the article about men and revenge.
Ditto
"Okey dokey, so how does it distinguish between those who believe their lies and those who feel guilty when innocent?""
Didn't take long to sink this deal. lol! exactly correct.
A scan wouldn't be any more useful than a polygraph if the person being scanned is a pathological liar who believes his own bulls*** or has sociopathic tendencies.
Bill Clinton couls have passed easily.
could
Put everyone in the FBI, CIA, and NSA through this.
A thousand spys will be revealed.
X42 is no doubt a polygraph technician's worst nightmare...
No ping? I just found a blurb in my paper and was going to ping you on this. DARPA and NIH have been working in fMRI research.
http://www.brainwavescience.com/
http://www.noliemri.com/
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.html?pg=2
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