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Study Suggests Magnets Can Force You to Tell the Truth
Estonian researchers claim that magnets can either force you to lie or make it impossible. Subjects in the study had magnets placed at either the left or the right side of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and the results suggest that the individual was either unable to tell the truth or unable to lie depending on which side was stimulated. From the article: "Last year, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also used powerful magnets to disrupt the area said to be the brain's 'moral compass,' situated behind the right ear, making people temporarily less moral."
...how do they work?
Just wait until Pistole hears of this.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
But how do they work?
"magnets to disrupt the area said to be the brain's 'moral compass,' situated behind the right ear, making people temporarily less moral"
Is that why people on cell phones act like assholes?
So...I thought it was strange that everybody said I was an ass hole after I took that 5 dollar bet to put the magnetic tape de-Gauzer to my temple and press the button!
Does this mean that I could get away with murder, because of some sun spots or something?
How do they work?
Must be the pull of the North Pole influencing their moral compass...
...or feel my right arm.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
My studies suggest a baseball bat is better.
The Feds will be very interested in this. If it pans out, expect portable versions deployed by police departments within five years.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Well, I'm no scientist but if you tell people they can lie or tell the truth doesn't that sort of skew the results? I think it would be more interesting if they simply asked questions and did not tell the subjects what the experiment was about while determining if they lied or not behind closed doors.
I request a large array of magnets, stage left, at all political debates, presidential appearances in joint sessions of congress, county council hearings, talk show round tables, to the left of all marketing managers' desks, and of course as special left-wall installations in special kiosks that will become the only places where you can access match.com, slashdot, yelp, and the huffington post.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I find the claim that they were able to make people unable to tell the truth much more surprising than the one that they were able to make people unable to lie.
While fun and useful, lying is somewhat cognitively demanding: You have to synthesize and deliver a contracfactual statement, you can't just remember it because it didn't happen. There has been some previous speculation that you should be able to detect lying, based on the greater mental effort(and distributed across more brain regions effort) involved, vs. the recall activity required to tell the truth.
That you can knock-out truth-telling(without just inducing aphasia or amnesia temporarily, which is a bit heavy handed) is much more surprising.
What woundrously wonderful research! What will they think of next...
Screw metal plates, I'm getting a faraday cage installed into (in lieu of) my skull!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This experiment sounds like it should be easy for a DIYer to reproduce. I can rig up an electromagnet helmet to prevent any placebo effect (no changing headgear) and make it double-blind.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Anybody know anything about them.
The article itself is very sketchy:
A random sampling of "16" ?
No mention of how strong a magnet.
Was there a "tendency" not to lie, or was it an on/off switch ?
I mean, seriously, I didn't know Elbonia was known for neuropsychological research ;-)
Modern neuroscience is killing any wiggle-room that might have remained regarding souls and free will. As I've mentioned before, neuroscientists, ethicists, and legal scholars are concerned that "my brain made me do it" will become a reasonable courtroom defense. (No, I'm not talking about the traditional "insanity defense".)
We will eventually be forced to re-think a lot of cherished beliefs about brains, minds, and behavior.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
OK, lets add this up.
Results of study appear to be conclusive and immensely counter-intuitive? Check.
Research is from a former Soviet bloc country? Check.
Study size is small? 16 people, so check.
No details on methodology? Check.
Study is published in popular press, not peer-reviewed journal? Nope, Behavioural Brain Research is peer-reviewed and appears pretty legit.
Well, if this is true and accurate, it could be completely ground-breaking in any number of fields. Fascinating if other teams are able to reproduce the results. Can you even imagine a world with reliable truth-telling machines? It's mind-boggling. The only reason that polygraphs haven't completely revolutionized our society is that they are completely BS, voodoo junk-science.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
However, the researchers noted that the success rate of inducing truth increased where the researcher also placed two powerful opposite-pole magnets on each side of the subject's testicles, the success rate increased further where the subject perceived that the researcher was losing his grip on said magnets.
No doubt you use different parts of your brain for telling the truth vs. lying and disabling the associated part or conduit would make lying harder. But unless something is lost in translation, this story is hype. It isn't a simple on/off switch.
"Sorry honey I'm stuck in work, yeah I know it's Friday...yeah...sorry...the noise?...oh, that's the cleaners...sounds like a bar?...hahahaha you funny...they've just got the radio on....don't you trust me?...I'll try to be quick...yes...love you too....bye!"
Right chaps, my round it is?
How do they WORK?
Another reminder that rTMS is a real thing and is still being used to figure out what parts of the brain do what. It's still not fine-grained enough to do anything but stimulate various areas.
if the comic books are right
the article quoted clearly states the subjects were 'More' likely and 'Less' likely not they 100% told/did not tell the truth.
bad slashdot summary again.
It is actually the age old puzzle, "two doors, tiger behind one, princess behind the other. One guard always tells the truth, the other always lies. What question would you ask ...". Some poor Estonian tried to translate this puzzle from Sanskrit to Estonian and ended up writing it as a research paper instead.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Now you see why I wear a tin foil hat.
They have those earrings with the magnetic backers... I knew something was up! wee need to put the magnent on the right and a regular one of the left!
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit!
So I guess we could crowdsource honesty by sending people to a scrap yard and walking them under one of those auto magnets? Hopefully the percentage of people with metal plates in their heads and Borg implants won't be too high....
Damn, we attached the magnet to the wrong side of the post-doctorate student's head when he was writing that study.
I think you go too far in your conclusion.
All they may have shown in this study is that personality is affected by the brain. Something we already knew.
It does not mean (as you suggest) that a soul does not exist because our personality, consciousness, etc. can be the result of both a soul AND a brain. I'm an MIT graduate with many friends in MIT's brain and cognitive sciences department. I've repeatedly asked my friends in that department about what is known about consciousness. They one and all, give me a similar answer -- that what consciousness is remains an open question despite years of research into the matter.
The headline is completely misleading, TFA:
The volunteers were presented a series of coloured discs, and told they could tell the truth or lie about the objects' colours while half were being stimulated on the left and half on the right.
Results showed that the eight volunteers who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often, while the ones with the right DPC stimulated were more likely to tell the truth, researchers said.
Maybe they always reject you not because they are evil, but because you are just plain creepy?
Posting anonymously because there are a lot of nuts on Slashdot who think, "Teh wimin rejected mee so they ar teh 33-vil!!11!" and will mod down anyone who points out the truth.
just got kinder and gentler. Rumsfeld will be *so* pissed.
Poorly worded article - they used Electro-magnets (Trans-Cranial Magnetic Stimulation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation
This is a well-known effect within academic circles, it must be a slow news day.
Yes, "We will eventually be forced to re-think a lot of cherished beliefs about brains, minds, and behavior."... by magnets.
ask the test subject the big questions, like 'is there a god?' and such
All of a sudden she forgot the word no. sweeeeet.
The answer is simple, ask them nothing, walk away. The puzzle doesn't define that you have to talk to the guards, nor open a door, nor that finding the princess is better. Maybe you're Steve Irwin, Croc Hunter, looking for the exotic animal. Maybe you don't care. Maybe you are a woman and the guards are irresistibly cute, and happy that both are behind the door and can have both guards to yourself.
The trick to the riddle is that it is founded on an entire series of common assumptions. The fact that we fear tigers, the fact that we "want" princesses, the fact that the guards are to be asked or have any real authority to block doors, and the fact that we have to find out what is behind the doors by asking a question based on the perceived morality of the guards... THAT is interesting.
I8-D
Since I am my brain then the argument "my brain made me do it" means that "I made me do it". I don't see how this kills the idea of free-will. Since I am the chemical and electrical processes in my brain then whatever causes them to do what they do IS me. There is no philosophical difference with the situation if you had a magical soul. After all, whatever would compose a magical soul has to follow some sort of rules to come up with whatever decision it makes, just as physics and chemistry underlie the decisions I make.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
This has already been discussed in 2000 at the RNC...
"force you"? "make it impossible"? Where is that bullshit coming from? It shows a significant change, that's very different from the absolute phrases used in the summary.
The next sentence was made with a magnet on my left hemisphere.
The previous sentence was made with a magnet on my right hemisphere.
Which one is tru-WHO GIVES A SHIT I HAVE NO MORALS WARWRWERWARWAAWKLERJA
www.ted.com look it up
future helmets for soldiers will contain magnets that will effectively switch off empathy, morality, ethical behavior giving us the perfect soldier
It sounds about as credible as phrenology, so I'll await confirmation.
But in the meantime, think about the impact this would have on society if there was truly a way (temporary, harmless) to prevent people from lying.
How many marriages would survive?
What would happen if 435 congressmen simultaneously "decided to retire...immediately"?
Would the resulting society even be recognizable?
-Styopa
Nobody's stopping you from answering the riddle with "I'd open both doors, butt-fuck the tiger and then have a circle-jerk with the guards while we watched it maul the princess."
Nobody but yourself, anyway.
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
From TFA:
"Spontaneous choice to lie more or less can be influenced by brain stimulation," researchers Karton and Bachmann wrote in Behavioural Brain Research.
That's it. Based on a single study of 16 people in one test.
This isn't news. It hardly qualifies as gossip.
That's not at all what the study showed/claimed/whatever. People were MORE LIKELY to tell the truth with the magnetic treatment. That's a far cry from force.
We already knew magnets applied to the head can make certain individuals sing bad folk-songs.
Have you ever been asked a question that was phrased in such a way that the truthful answer would make you sound like a complete ass or guilty as sin? Politicians and Lawyers are known for asking pointed character assassination questions, why not police or your boss? I'm not saying I'm not a fan of the magnet theory, I'm just saying that anything is worthwhile if used responsibly and I have a great skepticism that anything we create will be used responsibly.
It was already known that magnets applied to the head can make certain individuals sing bad folk-songs.
Let's face it, torture is unreliable (even before being nebulously immoral). One would think that by now there would have been more research on a drug or tool or other non-destructive way to loosen people's tongues. Of course it doesn't get you the *truth*, it just gets you honesty about what the person *believes* to be true. (Christopher Anvil, forgot the name of the story, had a mind-reader find out the hard way that reading people's minds didn't make him omniscient; it made him omni-opinient.)
And Jack Bauer would have been out of work much faster . . . See also "Veridicator" (H. Beam Piper), "fast-penta" (Lois McMaster Bujold), probably dozens of others.
...cell phone users can be such jerks.
The magenet in the cell phones speaker is disrupting their moral center....
You come to a fork in the road. One way leads to certain doom, the other to salvation. At the fork is a powerful magnet with two guards standing to either side...
I demand all politicians be made to wear devices that make them tell the truth!
There.. that'll get this technology banned in no time flat.
Ok... who couldn't read this article with out thinking of Dilbert and these guys: http://tim.2wgroup.com/blog/images/elbonian_computer.gif
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Why waste your time with a magnet when a simple vice grip applied in the right location can do the same thing?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Now i know why Lie to Me was canceled :O
You'd be surprised to know how many of us have been routinely calling you an asshole long before that.
A couple of clarifications are in order.
First TMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation) is not akin to putting a magnet on your skull....so don't embarrass yourself by having your spouse wear a special hat while you ask them about their infidelity.
Second, the researches never said that the technique makes it impossible to lie or tell the truth. They said that subjects were more likely to lie or tell the truth depending on the location stimulated.
Third, it really isn't much of a surprise that cranking up, or turning off areas of the brain have an effect on behavior.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
It has long been known that if you put two electromagnets either side of someone's balls, the more voltage you give them the more the subject leans towards telling you the truth.
It really bugs me when I see these articles describing TMS as "using magnets". These are intricately designed electromagnetic paddles which produce a field of a specific shape which induce a current. The paddles need to be correctly aimed at a particular brain region. In order to do the aiming, you'll need a MRI scan first. They make it sound like rubbing fridge magnets on your temples.
Move along, no sig to see here.
So, will my tinfoil hat protect me from those things, or increase their power?!
Would the other guard say you would lie to me?
Truthful guard: Yes, he would.
Big Liar guard: No, he wouldn't. (The truthful guard would say Yes, he would lie, so the liar guard will say the opposite.)
Truthful guard: Is the princess behind this door?
It'sa me, Mario!
Bowser, eat your heart out.
We are lying, but it is not our fault, It's EARTH's FAULT for pulling our damn moral compass! damn Earth!
LYCEUM, Athens -- Researchers led by Aristotle have released a startling scroll detailing their findings on a beverage called "wine." Apparently, when consumed in sufficient quantities, wine can lead to loss of inhibition, poor judgement, and lascivious behavior. Combined with last year's discovery that head trauma can make a person "loopy," it appears that our cherished ideas about the soul and free will must be called into question.
Student: Is it true that the foundation of the universe is paradox?
Master: Well, yes and no.
Wow. I am rather disturbed by the amount of ignorance being displayed over this article simply because the word "magnet" was mentioned. These are not refrigerator magnets or Q-Ray bracelets we're talking about here. With TMS we're talking something like a one TESLA electromagnetic coil placed right next to your skull that goes snap-snap-snap every time it goes off, momentarily creating an intensely powerful magnetic field that can either stimulate or supress the electrical activity in the targeted part of the brain. The effects are mild and temporary, but very real.
It's one thing to be skeptical of a product someone is trying to sell you, and quite another to ignorantly dismiss perfectly sound basic scientific research just because they used a word that has been misappropriated by snake oil salesmen.
The idea that stimulating or supressing a certain part of the brain can induce behavior modification is not new either. Any sort of damage to the left temporal prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain right under your left temple) is strongly correlated with having dark, intensely homicidal and/or suicidal thoughts. Many doctors have noted immediate positive post-operation personality shifts in patients who have had large tumors or cysts removed that were pressing on this area of the brain. It should not be much of a stretch to imagine that other behaviors can be modified by manipulating other parts of the brain.
I also find it bizarre that people keep commenting that they don't believe the brain can be "forced" to lie. I think a number of pathological liars who have had their lives ruined by having the constant overpowering urge to lie all the time would beg to differ.
I think the main thing we are learning these days is that the human brain is both more complex than we ever imagined and, in some very disturbing ways, far LESS complex than we would like it to be. But if we freely embrace the new knowledge we are gaining we may be close to learning how to actually repair many of the "broken" human beings that we now just keep in cages because we don't know what else to do with them. Not lobotomize or brainwash, but actually repair, back to what the rest of us consider "normal". To me, what is going on in neuroscience these days is very exciting. Ripe for abuse, of course, but still exciting because of the positive possibilities.
You ask, "which door would the other guard tell me is the one with the tiger behind it?"
That's the door you want to open to find the princess.
Does this mean my (patent pending) magnetic wigs* are a bad idea?
*Requires metal plated skull - not included.
The problem is, you can't know which side leads the subject to always tell the truth. Also, you are only allowed to make one question. Also, one of the 12 coins is either heavier or lighter than the others. And only two passengers fit in the boat at the same time.
How do you know which path leads to heaven?
http://xkcd.com/538/
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Kirk: Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie, do you hear me, everything he says is a LIE!
Mudd: Now listen carefully... I'm lying.
Norman: But... if everything you say is a lie, and you say you are lying then you are telling the truth, but you cannot be telling the truth because everything you say is a lie... Conflict! Conflict! Co-ordinate!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
They just keep hitting you with the magnets until you tell them what they want to hear,
That could make things interesting, don't ya think?
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
Many people have the sense that they are not their brains. Intuitively, their brains are like their eyes, ferrying information from the world to the "real you" that peeps out through the eyes like windows.
It's an insupportable notion, but one people hold very deal. There's a sense of self-ness that doesn't feel like it's just the reactions of zillions of neurons. And since neurologists can't yet explain the details, it's easy to treat your own perception of self-ness as more realistic than their handwaves.
There is key philosophical differences between dualism and physicalism. In physicalism, when the brain dies, you die. In dualism, there is a transcendent part that can continue to survive. Science practically presumes physicalism, and scientific arguments against dualism can veer into begging the question. Evidence like this makes it increasingly clear that there isn't any cogency to dualism, but it's not trivial.
There are a lot of moral implications as well. "Blame" is a less clear concept when the "I" isn't a rock-solid, immutable everlasting soul. Does guilt attenuate over time? What is the point of punishment? These are questions for which the intuitive dualism gives different answers from physicalism.
So, when people talk about "killing the idea of free will", it's really the dualistic free will they're talking about. The idea doesn't go away lightly, especially when neurologists have only hints like this experiment. This is one more interesting pointer in defeating the intuitive, and probably wrong, approach.
Did anyone RTFA? This is /. so I guess not.
"Results showed that the eight volunteers who had their left DPC stimulated lied more often, while the ones with the right DPC stimulated were more likely to tell the truth, researchers said."
There is a hell of a big difference between "forces you to tell the truth" and "statistically more likely, within this experiment's margin of error to tell the truth".
It's all the rage now!
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
have mod points today
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
....except that. ....and that.....and that.....and that.....and that.....and that.
The must also be making the summary lie, like usual.
Even the article that repeats the claim that "Zapping the brain with magnets makes it IMPOSSIBLE to lie, claim scientists" in the headline also lies. The actual body, in both articles, says only that there was more of a tendency afterward, and that could be explained by poor controls - the people were asked to do the test twice, and there was a very small group size (16 people).
I find it hard to believe that a lie is fabricated from any sort of moral standpoint whatsoever. When I make up a lie, I do it for reasons all my own. Morality is a distant second to whatever primary reason I might have.
For instance, I would not (if asked by a stranger on a bus) tell the truth about carrying a ton of money in my back pack. My primary motive has no moral inclination. It is driven by the perceived necessity for the safety of my belongings. Secondary would perhaps be perceived by some as a moral contradiction My parents might have said that it was evil to lie and that I would spend another agonizing eternity in hell. If such were the case, and if that were anything to do with morals, they're NOT MY morals, they're social morals.
Even if a magnet is somehow able to seize up my moral faculties, I would still be free to tell the Truth, or to tell a Lie based on intellectually reasoned stimulation. No amount of mental stimulation will be able to so that.
I admit however, that there is a possibility that one could be immersed into a state of "willingness to respond with the truth rather than the false", however, it would be more due to a mental state and a clever questioner than anything else. Ask the wrong questions and *blam!* your truth serum will fall apart. As long as the mind forgets that it is unsafe, irresponsible, unsuitable or whatever else, to tell a lie, it will not bother making up one. As soon as it realizes the situation, it will invariably fight off the influence and pull its inhibitions right back to where there are supposed to be.
That noted, I find it impossible to imagine how someone could be influenced to tell a lie every time s/he opens his/her mouth. I just don't see that happening.
Geekism is your _only_ God!
If you wanted to make this a credible experiment, wouldn't you use more people and a CONTROL??? Out of 16 people, with two tests, what are the chances that there were two (or even four) less lies per candidate total?
Strong enough to have an effect, depending on the audio you feed to them?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166432811005468
A magnet on the right makes one tell the truth, but a magnet on the left makes one more sinister.
There's an old joke:
What's the difference between a used car salesperson
and a computer salesdroid? The used car salespeople
know when they're lying.
I'm pretty sure you could substitute a few other jobs for "computer salesdroid" with
"politician" high on the list.
I have a heavily magnetized hammer. Now tell me the truth.
What happened to all the pseudo-skeptical "magnets have no effect on living tissue" hysteria? Seems it wasn't so long ago that people were being laughed out of this forum for claims like this. People should stick to their guns.
Makes me wonder if any of this has been tied to previous, but highly variable, research on the effects of cell phones on the brain. Wow, could cell phones cause one to be truthful, depending on which ear is used. :-O
They hire illegal immigrants to work for them.