Paul said >Same problem as other lie detectors. >It is basically measuring an emotional response. >There's no good evidence that any lie detector can discriminate among >different reasons for an emotional response (that's what the elaborate >questioning protocols are _supposed_ to do).
I agree with everything said so far. I would add that there is the problem of lack of a double blind condition (at least there appears to be from what I've read). Secondarily to the problem of not being able to tell what emotion one is experiencing this study fails miserably to even deal with differentiating the physiological response from the emotion (given that most of the literature divides these into two separate conditions). What worries me the most is that this is exactly the kind of rush to acceptance that the public and administrators (read government officials) are so good at. Coming at this time, such judgements are particularly harmful or at least potentially so. We normally operate by saying that, "better that 10 guilty should go free than one innocent should be punished". Yet what this study seems to fail to mention is the rate of false positives. Those convicted (by this and similar "lie" tests)who are, in fact, identified as such in error. Sure the test catches 75% of the liars. How many truth tellers did it catch is a more interesting result to me. This would also seem to be one fairly easy test to beat through developmentof "make-ups" to help hide the guilty (which would, of course, only increase the false positive rate). For example, the military has make-up to "hide" from thermal imaging. The problem being that you'd have to cover your entire body with it so it is impractical. This "eye flush" would seem to be an ideal use for such a product that would hide the thermal changes. Scary stuff. ********************************************** Timothy O. Shearon, Ph.D. Department of Psychology (Chairperson) Albertson College of Idaho Caldwell, Idaho ph- 208-459-5840 teaching interests: neuropsychology, history of psychology, developmental (topical), intro --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
