CHALLENGE
Lie Detection
$1 MILLION (Prize amount to be confirmed. Announcement expected for next year)
Lie detection is an assessment of a verbal statement with the goal to reveal a possible intentional deceit. Lie detection may refer to a cognitive process of detecting deception by evaluating message content as well as non-verbal cues It also may refer to questioning techniques used along with technology that record physiological functions to ascertain truth and falsehood in response. The latter is commonly used by law enforcement in the United States, but rarely in other countries because it is based on pseudoscience.
There are a wide variety of technologies available for this purpose. The most common and long used measure is the polygraph. A comprehensive 2003 review by the National Academy of Sciences of existing research concluded that there was “little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy.” There is no evidence to substantiate that non-verbal lie detection, such as by looking at body language, is an effective way to detect lies, even if it is widely used by law enforcement.
Researchers have turned to looking for other ways to track deception. The most promising fields are fMRI and EEG. EEG and fMRI both look to the central nervous system to compare time and topography of activity in the brain for lie detection. While a polygraph detects changes in activity in the peripheral nervous system, fMRI has the potential to catch the lie at the ‘source’. To better understand why fMRI, lie detection is the future of lie detection one must first understand how it works.
New methods based on different technologies from drugs, brain scanning or others must be researched and introduced to obtain certainty in lie detection tests in order to fight criminality , terrorism and other activities for whose scope lie detectors where needed.
