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Lie Detector Company Threatens Critical Scientists With Suit
An anonymous reader writes "The Swedish newspaper DN reports that the Israeli company Nemesysco has sent letters to researchers at the University of Stockholm, threatening legal action if they do not stop publishing findings (Google translation). An article called 'Charlatanry in forensic speech science: A problem to be taken seriously' was pulled by the publisher after threats of a libel lawsuit." Online translations can be a little wonky; if your Swedish is as bad as mine, this English-language article describes the situation well.
Bork, bork, bork...
Set your phasers on "funky"!
1. socially conservative politics
2. intellectual property laws
civilization is bettered in terms of happiness, health, and financial prosperity as long as the power of social conservatives and corporate oligarchy are held in check. certainly, there is now ay to ever completely defeat these forces, and they do actually do good some good in this world. but they must be eternally pruned, for in part sof the world where their power runs unchecked, corruption and classism, intolerance and tribalism take hold
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nemesysco's Poly-Layered Voice Analysis measures 18 parameters of speech in real-time for interrogators at police, military and secret-services agencies. Its accuracy as a lie detector has proven to be less important than its ability to more quickly pinpoint for interrogators where there are problems in a subject's story. Officers then can zero in much more quickly with their traditional interrogation techniques.
The software measures voice for a variety of parameters including deception, excitement, stress, mental effort, concentration, hesitation, anger, love and lust. It works prerecorded, over the phone and live, the company said. V Entertainment recommends it for screening phone calls, checking the truthfulness of people with whom you deal or gauging romantic interest.
The display can show each measured parameter in a separate window, with real-time traces of instantaneous measurements while flashing the overall for each parameter, such as "false probable," "high stress" and "SOS." Ultimately, the company plans to offer versions of its detectors for cell phones, dating services, teaching aids, toys and games.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
to refute this libel claim, is a lie detector test :-)
Oh wait...
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I wonder when companies will realize that trying to silence people in this modern age will just lead to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
http://www.thelocal.se/17188/20090127/
I guess Sweden isn't so neutral. :-P
Forget the lawsuits. Ask the researchers if they'd be willing to be connected to the lie detectors and to then testify that their research and conclusions were made in good faith.
If the detectors indicate a lie, the situation doesn't really change. But if the detectors do not indicate a lie, the manufacturer is pretty well cornered.
I'm so glad my employer lets me come in casual every day.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
It's not a "lie detector." That's the point.
It's apparently fairly easy to fool a lie detector, and it's gotten to the point now where lie detector tests can't be submitted as evidence in court because they're so unreliable. Mind you, they still have a use on Maury to determine who's been cheating on who. That's always entertaining.
I have nothing compelling to say
I guess it's back to using an E-meter or flipping a coin to see who is telling the truth. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter
I suppose if any of these go to court scientists are going be forced to take a lie detector test to disprove the validity of their findings?
We can all play this game can't we? Perhaps the faeries or some deity made the scientist publish against their will all that'd be needed for a win in court would be to falsify the unfalsifyable and plain absurd?
Game on!
.
Hey, look! I can blast buzzwords and pretend my software works too!
So how much would you pay? Wait, don't answer because this can flash the overall value for each parameter in a separate window! Now how much would you pay?
Here's the abstract of the article from http://www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/IJSLL/article/view/3775
ABSTRACT
A lie detector which can reveal lie and deception in some automatic and perfectly reliable way is an old idea we have often met with in science fiction books and comic strips. This is all very well. It is when machines claimed to be lie detectors appear in the context of criminal investigations or security applications that we need to be concerned. In the present paper we will describe two types of âoedeceptionâ or âoestress detectors" (euphemisms to refer to what quite clearly is known as âoelie detectorsâ). Both types of detection are claimed to be based on voice analysis but we found no scientific evidence to support the manufacturersâ(TM) claims. Indeed, our review of scientific studies will show that these machines perform at chance level when tested for reliability. Given such results and the absence of scientific support for the underlying principles it is justified to view the use of these machines as charlatanry and we argue that there are serious ethical and security reasons to demand that responsible authorities and institutions should not get involved in such practices.
I wasn't able to find a copy of the paper itself.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
An Israeli company is saying that Swedes are lying about how easy it is to fool a machine capable of detecting lying. But the Swedes are publishing results that meet the standard of good science: verifiable and repeatable.
I'm goin with the Swedes on this...
Actually, my first reaction on reading the article was "holy *&#$&*#*$, this is amazingly good for an automated translation."
Looks like Google's making some serious statistical-translation progress. Mindblowing.
As in, Nemesys co, as in Nemesis Co? Man, I sure wouldn't work for my nemesis. These scientists should have seen it coming.
It's probably because the scientists' bullshit detector infringed on Nemesysco's patents.
I know lie detectors have only been more of toys or threats than really useful tools. A trained questioner doesn't need a lie detector. A lie detector is more for them to let you know that they are almost positive that you've lied on the subject.
There are folks that want lie detectors to work like in the movies or have it on their cell phones so that they know when the other person is lying. They'd hate to have it used on them though. I have news for you.
Everyone has a built-in lie detector. It's just how well that it's been trained to work. How would the world be different if we gave elementary school kids the same questioning for lies tools that are usually taught to police detectives? Short answer; not too different. They'd just know faster when the teachers are lost and clueless, and any attempts to bring new information that you know the teacher doesn't have would just be punished faster. We would get politicians that are even better at lying though.
Ever take a lie detector test? Years back, a prospective employer sent me for one. Unlike most people, I actually read the release they asked me to sign, and discovered: 1. I'd be giving up the right to challenge the results of the test, by any manner, and 2. The testing agency reserved the right to sell the results of the test, good or bad, to ANYONE, in perpetuity. Does this sound ethical, or as though they trust their own test? I told them to stuff the test, and the job. The next day, I was called about the position, and explained I could not, in conscience, acquiesce to the polygraph test. They said, "Oh, don't worry about that, we get it if we can, but it doesn't mean anything. Welcome aboard!"
SmurgenFlurgenLawyerBorken
Bork Bork Bork
A new Muppet Character.
Easy solution: the scientists should agree to undergo an interview in which they would be asked if they have proof of what they are saying. A lie detector provided by this Nemesys Co. would then detect if they are lying or not.
If lie detectors *really* worked, we wouldn't have to torture so many people, would we? We'd just hook them up to the lie detector, and ask them questions, like, "Will the LHC discover the Higgs boson?", and then we would know if they were guilty or not.
The US could close down Guantanamo in a fortnight.
But then the Torture Industry would need a bailout.
Or maybe the Torture Industry should just get a cut of every lie detector sold?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Perhaps we should bring back Trail by Ordeal [fire, water, combat, rabid wolverine] as a means of determining truth. Give them each a broadsword and let Odin decide who's telling the truth. Besides cutting back on this sort of dispute, it might make for an excellent (or at least revenue generating ) reality teevee series.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
Polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, coin flips, sticking your hand in the statue's mouth and Scientology's "E-Meters" all share the same validity in catching lies -- basically none. It's all pretend "science" with cool moving needles and wires, but you might as well be watching a seismograph for all the good it does you. It simply gives government agencies and insurance companies an excuse to call you a liar. "Hey, don't look at me, the MACHINE says you're lying..."
Now FOX has this propaganda puff piece for the TSA called "Lie to Me" going where an actor I like is helping spread nonsense I can't stand.
Can you imagine the revolution society would undergo if "voice stress analyzers" actually worked? "I did not have sex with that woman!" BZZZ! "Saddam Hussein is building nuclear weapons!" BZZZ! "The 700 billion will be wisely spent!" BZZZZ! "I was misquoted!" BZZZ!
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It was extremely tasteless and irresponsible for the Swedes to publish this, especially considering the fact that two days ago was Holocaust day. Shame on them for insulting the victims, killing them a second time. Being a Holocaust fundamentalist, I ask everybody to join me in boycotting everything Swedish.
"It's not a lie if you believe it, Jerry."
http://antipolygraph.org/lie-behind-the-lie-detector.pdf
We've known the truth for years. Polygraphs are inadmissible in court for good reasons.
Overrated, Troll, and Flamebait mod points are not to be used towards posts you disagree with. That IS censorship.
Premier [Diebold]? ES&S? Sequoia? Names sound familiar?
This is the exact same stunt that the voting systems vendors do whenever anybody finds a security vulnerability in a voting system.
IIRC, Taser International has also been known to use legal action to silence reports of Tasers causing deaths.
send this to Mythbusters, i'll like to see that company tying to sue them.
- Human knowledge belongs to the world
I don't know about Swedish, but I use Google translate for Chinese and Arabic translations into English a lot ,and they've gotten notably better in some places over the past year.
MT system performance is often very dependent on language genre. They tend to be good at translating news because news text has been a big focus of NLP training corpus development. It's a pretty well controlled genre (you don't get a lot of random slang or neologisms, non-standard syntax, etc.) and there's a whole lot of it already electronically encoded (no print or speech to text conversion needed). And it's packed full of information, which is important to a lot of the big funders of MT research.
If the scientists don't straighten up they're going to be forced to wear a suit???
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money
Armani? I suppose other types of suits might be threatening too.
Here comes a translation. I didn't proofread it, and it's late here, but probably better than google's. (Or so I hope! :) )
Scientists threatened by lawsuit
Two Swedish sciencetists are being threatened with being sued after publishing paper that condemns the use of polygraphs. The manufacturer Nemesysco writes in a letter to the scientists' publisher that they can be sued for libel if they write about the subject again.
- It is very serious that they are trying to silence us this way. I have never heard of anything similar. We have evidently hurt their business, says Franceso Lacerda, professor in phonetics at the Stockholm University.
Together with Anders Eriksson, professor in phonetics at the Gothenburg University, he wrote the very critical article "Charlatanry in forensic speech science" in 2007.
As DN [the newspaper publishing the article, translator's note] previously reported did the magazine that printed the paper withdraw after pressure from the Israeli company Nemesysco. The article disappeared from the magazine's webpage and an excuse was printed in a later issue.
The article was directly aimed at the company's polygraph oatent, sais Francisco Lacerda: - We showed that the invention cannot function. The article had a journalistic tone and was quite provocatively written. But we wanted to prove that the technology between polygraphs is a scam.
Nemesycos' lawyers wrote that the authors could be sued for libel if they wrote about the subject again, which the publisher agreed to present to the authors: "We will warn the authors that they should not publish the article in another forum and that if they publish a similar article to another magazine they might be sued for libel.", writes the editor in a response. The letter was also sent to Francisco Lacerda and Anders Eriksson.
- Of course this feels very uncomfortable. You don't know where it will end. At the same time it is my responsibily as a sciencetist to share my knowledge. The company hasn't presented any counterarguments, but simply try to silence us, says Francisco Lacerda.
He hopes the company won't act on their threat, but still says there is a "great risk".
In a letter to DN.se Nemesysco writes that the Swedish authors slander the company. The warnings from the company doesn't stop Francisco Lacerda from planning more papers on the subject. While the sciencetist community agrees about polygraphs being folly, they are still being used by governments, banks and insurance companies in many countries, he says. In the UK they are used to nail benefit scammers.
- The test hits arbitrarily. It can hit vulnerable people, that for instance apply for income support. The companies have made a lot of money on this, and when we say that the emperor is naked we become a threat to them, says Francisco Lacerda.
Right now he works hard on studying Nemesyscos patent documents. He wants to publish the results, either in his own blog or in a scientific magazine. The public should know about the foundations for the polygraph technology, he says.
In the meantime the acting of Nemesyscos has led to a wider attention for the scientific results of the Swedish professors. -Hardly that was their intention, but since the article was withdrawn I get loads of e-mail and requests for copies of the article. It would only have been scarecly read if the company just had let it pass with silence, says Francisco Lacerda.
Quantum hacker.
Those dastardly Swedes!
Now where did I put my lutefisk-proof rain slicker...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
http://www.ling.gu.se/konferenser/iafpa2006/Abstracts/Eriksson_IAFPA%202006.pdf
and
http://www.ling.gu.se/konferenser/iafpa2006/presentations/Tuesday/session8/Eriksson/Eriksson_iafpa2006.ppt
called scientists and lawyers who should have their asses KICKED ... I wish i could conjure up the kinds of words that would make them DARE to try to sue me. Until and uless they have PROOF without resorting to shitty lawsuit threats, then to hell with them. (fuckers)...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I found it by clicking on the aticle link( An article called "Charlatanry in forensic speech science: A problem to be taken seriously" was pulled by the publisher after threats of a libel lawsuit.") in the summary.
Then I had to 'temporarily allow scrbd.com' in 'noscript'.
Next you need to find the 'iPaper' link (upper left border of reader window next to the scribd logo)and mouse over it, select 'view mode' from the menu, then select 'book mode' from the 'view mode' menu.
Use the bar(s) to change 'book' pages...may also need to right click and zoom in, the magnifier tool at the top of the window was broken for me.
Hope this helps, even if it's only to start a flurry of "U dum n00b!- Here's the right way!!11! LOLZ!1!" replies. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I find it hilarious that the company name comes from 'Nemesis.' Does anyone else think that this presents an image that, no matter who is being tested, they are already determined to be the enemy?
Bill was not lying. Just ask any fifth grade boy if his friend can truthfully say "I've had sex" if all he got was a BJ.
Eddie: Do you hold a grudge against Montgomery Burns?
Moe: No.
[buzz]
Moe: All right, maybe I did. But I didn't shoot him.
[ding]
Eddie: Checks out. Okay, sir. You're free to go.
Moe: Good, 'cause I got a hot date tonight.
[buzz]
Moe: A date.
[buzz]
Moe: Dinner with friends.
[buzz]
Moe: Dinner alone.
[buzz]
Moe: Watching TV alone.
[buzz]
Moe: All right! I'm going to sit at home and ogle the ladies in the Victoria's Secret catalog.
[buzz]
Moe: Sears catalog.
[ding]
Moe: Now would you unhook this already, please? I don't deserve this kind of shabby treatment.
[buzz]
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
It's sad; the poor British always try so hard to be nice to every whinging minority. They feel guilty for their ancestors having a great empire that beat some sense into many backwards peoples.
That's no way to talk about the Americans. Oh, hang on... it is. Guess we didn't hold on to that one long enough to beat much sense into them ;)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
just stop stalking her.
Just the same, when Obama says "Yes we can close Guantanamo!" he isn't promising to do a goddamn thing, he's just phrasing his aspirations for what America could do in such a way that people hear "OMG Barack is gonna close gitmo!"
This is not lying, and treating it like it is is just victimology of the voter against eeeeeeevil politicians.
That is absolutely lying! We're talking about natural language communication here, not a programming language. Words and phrases have meaning that are not necessarily the sum of their individual parts, there is context involved that guides the necessary interpretation of both sides. As in, pedantic literal interpretation is not, and has never been, the sole judge of the meaning of a sentence.
When the words spoken by a speaker are designed to convey a certain meaning to the listeners, and the listeners receive that meaning, then we call that successful communication. When that correctly conveyed meaning is deliberately false, that's a fucking lie!
When the speaker also designs their words to leave themselves a semantic escape valve so they can claim to have meant something else later, that doesn't mean they weren't lying, it means they knew they were lying and thus needed the out!
When Obama said "Yes we can close Gitmo", everyone correctly interpreted that to mean that if he were elected, he would close Gitmo. That is the meaning he obviously intended to convey. If he doesn't close it, then that's a lie*. And if he defended himself by saying that all he had meant was he thought it was something America could do hypothetically, then that makes him a double liar because that obviously is not the message he intended to convey when he spoke!
The only people who think that isn't lying are:
1) People who've sacrificed reason itself on the Altar of Pedantry.
2) Liars who are lying about it not being lying and just like being able to use semantics to escape from obvious lies.
I refuse to sacrifice my ability to detect lies covered with such a thin ruse to either group of people.
* So far so good on this count, but of course I won't be happy until the thing is really truly closed.
The enemies of Democracy are
Don't trust these multinational companies with ulterior profit motives to tell you who's lying and who's not! Instead, use my patented (ok, patent pending (ok, I'm thinking of applying for one)) lie detector with a FIFTY percent accuracy! You may not know it, but you may have a few already in your home! (or look on the internet for a simulator). Just pick up a die (dice) and roll it! 246 is truth and 135 is a lie!
Also consider the state of "scientific" fraud in Israel at the moment - there is the Yuri Geller Institute of all things getting a pile of money, there is some weird space laser thing that is supposed to even be able to shoot down artillery shells in tests that has been strangely quiet when there are slow moving thirty year old surplus Iranian rockets flying about. There is corruption right to the top of the government (hence Olmert's resignation when he got caught) which makes it an ideal environment for such fraud to thrive (for now anyway - the fact that Olmert had to resign shows that things can improve).
Mythbusters already did a lie detector segment.
They marked as "plausible" the proposition that one could beat the detector.
http://mythbustersresults.com/episode93
Some FUD from both sides about the reliability or lack thereof of Mythbusters' test.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mythbusters+lie+detector&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
There's an excellent book available at
http://antipolygraph.org/pubs.shtml called Lie Behind the Lie Detector. Well worth a read.
I worked for a bank that regularly used Lie Detectors in cases of defalcation (employee theft of money).
The entire procedure is mumbo-jumbo and exists only to re-enforce in the subjects mind that the Lie Detector can really detect their lies. I never had a suspected employee make it all the way through the test before they confessed; many would confess as I drove them to the test.
Why does this BS work? Most criminals are not that smart. A local judge had a bright floodlight mounted in the courtroom and he would tell the defendants that it was a "truth light" and would expose them if they lied. Many defendants would accept that as a fact and confess to their crimes. Defense attorneys complained and got the "truth light" removed.
Lie Detectors are just like the "truth light". They, along with the entire procedure, convince stupid people to tell the truth or at least believe that theirs lies can be detected.
That's why the company wants the article suppressed. It's like someone printing the directions on how to perform a popular magic act.
A good friend and former very successful homicide detective admitted to me that if criminals got smart, the cops would catch very few of them.
We generally accept that it is morally OK to lie to and deceive a suspected criminal because we believe that an innocent person has nothing to hide and a guilty person "wants" to confess. But people are stupid which is why innocent people wind up convicted of some crime.
That's the downside to this game of lies and Lie Detectors. Since it's really all BS, the police could tell an innocent person that he lied and convince an innocent person to confess to a crime. It's not like that has never happened, is it?
Research on the Streisand Effect has been given a big boost. Potential customers of their equipment are going to Google for information on it, discover this campaign to silence skeptics rather than reply to their claims and think twice about buying.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, "Lie to Me" does disparage polygraphs. I should have been more clear. "Micro-expressions" and "body language" have even less validity than a Scientology e-meter. "He flashed me a 0.2 second LIP QUIVER! You know he's lying! And the Latina always knows when you are full of it!"
Again, it's just made-up nonsense that large government agencies like to use to bullshit their way into doing whatever they want, only this time they don't have to cough up for a collection of wires, string, blinky lights and tin cans....
Really, just stop and consider this for a minute. If sincerity could ever actually be systematically, categorically proven one way or the other, if there ever were "naturals" or machines that could guarantee that this person, to the best of their knowledge, either is or is not telling the truth, then it would revolutionize society in ways that would make the internet insiginificant in comparison.
The police force as we know it -- gone. The accounting game as it's currently played -- gone. Politics -- DRASTICALLY changed. Poker -- gone. Marriages -- oh God help us...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
This is a completely valid and interesting point.
How do you test a lie detector? For it to work you have to have someone ACTUALLY LYING, not saying something contrary to the truth, but actually trying to be secretly untruthful. It is an impossible situation because you have to know 100% that they are lying and they have to be 100% concealing a secret. Otherwise, its all just guess work.
There is NO WAY to test a lie detector without the existence of a 100% accurate working lie detector. Short of that, there is no way to objectively or theoretically test any such device.
Lie detectors are bogus...I didn't RTFA, and I'm sure they touched on more than the traditional polygraph(there are countless). But the polygraph is the most widely employed to my knowledge......
I took a job with "Loomis"(the armored car you see at banks, and a contractor to the federal reserve), I suppose they wanted to make sure a career criminal wasn't in the back of the truck with 100-500k of cash. Or the fed-truck each morning with 1-5mil of cash?
Soooo....they had a polygraph test.
Now I am not a career criminal, but I WAS in need a job...I was informed I would be subjected to a polygraph, and I was free to decline, but I would be ineligible for the job if I did so. So....google to the rescue!
My first search of "how to beat a polygraph" turned up http://antipolygraph.org/, and sure enough, after reading it I felt confident.
Few days later, I was called and told it was time to come and take my test. I followed the instructions and passed with flying colors. Countermeasures [the site recommended] that I employed were:
1. I counted my breaths(one one thousand...two one thousand..) to a count of 4 for each breath.
2. On control questions("are the lights on in this room?") I:
a)increased my breathing from 4 seconds to 2
seconds
b)flexed facial muscles
c)feigned panic in my mind
d)applied painful pressure to my tongue with my teeth
(aka: all the tested variables get peaked: breathing rate, blood pressure, perspiration)
3. On obvious-intentional-lie questions("Do you agree I am 15 feet tall?") I used the steps listed above to give produce a control question response.
4. On non-obvious-intentional-lie questions("You have never been dishonest about money, have you?") I used the steps from above to produce a control question response.
5. On REAL questions("Have you done ?") I simply lied and said no...
summary: since your baseline response is so low(4 second breaths, etc), and your expected-lie response is so high(2 breaths, blood pressure up, perspiration), my real lies flew well under the radar of my expected responses for a lie.
epilogue: i work at a job i have no business working at, i touch millions of [your] dollars every day, and constantly daydream about misappropriating it.
posting as AC, it's doubtful they care, i've never taken a dime. but nonetheless.
Now anyone can try to detect lies with the GPL Lie Detector for Linux.
It seems to me that we can apply a criterion that's already applied in criminal law everywhere: mens rea. ("Evil mind", or rather meaning "evil intent.")
See, let's say a shingle falls off my house and brains a passerby. At least theoretically the law has to determine the degree of mens rea behind it, ranging from premeditation (I actually rigged the roof in advance to kill that guy) to criminal negligence (I had no clue that the roof is in bad condition, though maybe I should have) to none whatsoever (it was freshly inspected, nobody could know it was gonna fall.) Note that "criminal negligence" is actually somewhat as a misnomer, in that it's actually not a criminal offense in most cases. It really means more like "negligence in the criminal law definition" than "criminally-punishable negligence." You usually have to rank up to at least "recklessness" (I knew or had plenty of indication that the roof is dangerously unsafe and can injure someone, e.g., shingles had fallen before or an inspection warned me before of the possibility, and obviously didn't give a flying fuck) to actually be liable.
It seems to me that the same can be applied here. Did that politician just choose an unfortunate wording, or did he _intend_ to mislead? Very important distinction to make, IMHO.
If it's intentional wording to mislead, then it seems to me that the GP poster is correct: that's a fucking deliberate lie. And its being worded to leave a way out just proves the premeditation some more.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
IDK Swedish law, but it seems to me objective scientific journals are unlikely to be convicted of defamation.
A real scientific article should be based on facts, and shouldn't pose conclusions as being factual.
Either the journal didn't think their integrity was worth the cost of a law suite, OR the journal was caught publishing a less-than scientific article. (both quite possible)
There are some Scientologists who actually believe that the E-meter is detecting body thetans.
No there aren't, there are a bunch of scientologists who think Mwa mwa, mwa, mwa mwa mwa mwa Thetans.
Seriously, while some people do just believe what they're told, the guy who made the e-meter obviously knew enough to do so and so must have understood just how ridiculous the concept is. (Not ridiculous that a galvanometer could detect unknown problems, but ridiculous if assumed to be true without testing...)
They don't have to know better, just enough to know that they shouldn't make crazy claims without proof, for it to be fraud.
posting to undo mistaken moderation. move along.
Property is theft.
FTA:
'At the same time, Nemesysco's actions have led to even greater media attention for the two Swedish professors' research. "It was hardly their intention. But since the article was withdrawn, I have received lots of mail and requests for copies of the article. The article would not have been read to this extent if the company had simply ignored it in silence," says Francisco Lacerda to the Dagens Nyheter.'
So now, instead of the just the readers of some obscure journal, it's all over da Intertubes. Well done boys!
I would think that there is a much larger body of scientific studies publish that support the principals used in the E-meter in deception detection than there seems to be for these voice stress detectors.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Perhaps we should bring back Trail by Ordeal
Didn't we just give that up?
No, no. You got it wrong. In a true medieval-style "trial by ordeal", you waterboard both the terrorist-suspect and G. W Bush and who ever survives should surely have told the truth~
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I'd let them sue, then in front of the judge, offer to have the researchers repeat their findings while hooked to the Namesys machine.
Namesys can't complain since it would be admitting their machine is crap, and they can't dispute the results either.
Indeed. Further, Scientologists seem to use the E-mter as a stress detector, not a lie detector. While Thetans as the origin of such stress is a bit ... comical, the scientific evidence that an E-meter is in fact a device that detects stress is pretty good.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4681630
OK, then let's assume that those aren't the ones the study is talking about...instead they are talking about people who are aware of their falsehood.