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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."
Must be the pull of the North Pole influencing their moral compass...
Yeah, I find the whole thing a bit dubious. It's not shocking to me that it might be possible to disrupt brain activity in such a way that a particular patient couldn't fabricate certain kinds of lies, but the idea that everyone's brain has a clear "lies on" and "lies off" switch that can be activated with a magnet.
Reading one of 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.
So it sounds like they were given the option of lying about something with no consequences, and they lied more often with one part of the brain stimulated. It doesn't say that it was "impossible" to lie, or even that it made it difficult to lie when strongly motivated to do so. Maybe it didn't directly cause them to be more likely to lie, but made them feel more whimsical or creative and likely to want to lie in a consequence-free environment.
Then there's the much-overlooked difference between "not-lying" and "telling the truth". I can tell you something false because I'm mistaken, because I'm telling you a fictional story, or because I'm over-simplifying. None of those actions are deceptive in nature, but none of them are "telling the truth".
"No mention of how strong a magnet."
You win a prize for asking the correct question.
It is a TMS. so we are talking about a MRI level magnetic fields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation
here is a slightly better article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128284.400-powerful-magnets-hamper-our-ability-to-lie.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those thinking parent's story is just an anecdote and thus not evidence, here's a Chicago Tribune story on some real research into how common this practice is.
I am officially gone from
Won't work on politicians, because the magnets affect brain function--- meaning that you need a brain first. No worries here.
b.g.
I can't even SPELL esoteric, or mystical. You must be confusing me with Confucius or something!
Oh, wait - I screwed that up, didn't I?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You know... the funny thing is that this statement is much more true for magnets than it is for tides. Magnetism, like gravity, is a fundamental force that we can't explain. It just is. It is just one of the rules of the universe and we haven't been able penetrate other than to measure and bound it's behavior with mathematical equations.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!