FBI File of Lie Detector's Creator

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday October 31, 2006 @04:24PM from the lasso-of-truth dept.

George Maschke writes, "It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot.' He is alleged to have misrepresented the result of a study he conducted for the Gillette razor company in 1938, for which he reportedly received some $30,000, a handsome sum in those days. Despite these misgivings, the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth) to guide investigations as well as to screen applicants and employees. You can download Marston's FBI file here (736 KB PDF)."

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Re:A way out? by CoverStory · 2006-10-31 16:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

As shown recently on MythBusters, Cleve Backster the man that originated the comparison test used by most law enforcement agencies to determine the results of a polygraph test spent most of his career using those tests on plants.

From any interview given in 1997
... the imagery entered my mind of burning the leaf I was testing. I didn't verbalize, I didn't touch the plant, I didn't touch the equipment. The only new thing that could have been a stimulus for the plant was the mental image. Yet the plant went wild. The pen jumped right off the top of the chart.

If that won't convince someone about the accuracy of the test, I don't think TFA will.