Lies, damned lies, and lie detectors

[SKIRRID5]

Have you seen the truly frightening item on today's SWIFT, on the JREF site? American forces in Afghanistan are to be issued with hand-held lie-detectors to help them sort out the truth when dealing with these lying Muslim beardies. The project is costing about $2.5 million. Apart from the risks to the Americans from unreliably monitored information, how many Afghans are going to be abused, if not actually shot, because of this incredible foolishness? How many villages will be bombed because an informant is thought to be lying when he says there are no Taleban there? This is a perfect illustration of the fact that woo-woo is not just pathetic nonsense, it's dangerous.

[ForAllOfThis]

Don't over exaggerate.

I'm pretty sure there will be experts involved on this project. The efficiency of 'lie detectors' actually is based on how good the interregator is at interpreting the information with respect to the 'lie detectors' results. Training will be given to the soldiers who are expected to use them.

I'm pretty sure that any major decisions will not be made using the lie detectors, and in modern war innocent people are not bombed anyway. People in afghanistan are being abused and shot anyway, I don't see how thats anything new and I highly doubt it will increase the amount of people shot. It is more likely to reduce the risk of shootings and increase the risk of more violent interrogation techniques.

[ZERO]

and in modern war innocent people are not bombed anyway.

Is this a serious statement or a joke? ???

[filippo lippi]

It is more likely to reduce the risk of shootings and increase the risk of more violent interrogation techniques.

I'm guessing you don't have any evidence for this and neither will the US govt.

[bobdezon]

Don't over exaggerate.

They dont work, its dangerous to rely on equipment that does not work. Especially in wartime.


I'm pretty sure there will be experts involved on this project.

There are usually experts, and "experts", the distinction being one knows what the hell they are doing, and the other merely thinks they know, what the hell they are doing.


The efficiency of 'lie detectors' actually is based on how good the interregator is at interpreting the information with respect to the 'lie detectors' results.

Lie detector tests (polygraph) do not work, they cannot be used as evidences in court. There are multiple reasons a person may give a false positive.


Training will be given to the soldiers who are expected to use them.

That still does not guarantee that something that does NOT work will suddenly work.


I'm pretty sure that any major decisions will not be made using the lie detectors,

Well if they really want to ask al quida about the best way to reserve a halaal restaurant on a weekend, I am sure it will be fine. However as a counter terrorism or intelligence tool it is still useless.


and in modern war innocent people are not bombed anyway.

Whut? ???


People in afghanistan are being abused and shot anyway, I don't see how thats anything new and I highly doubt it will increase the amount of people shot.

Really? So intel gathered by a machine that cannot work is used to plan an intelligence or counter insurgency operation. Suddenly because the intel was usless and gleaned from a person under extreme duress. The operation goes "tits up" and everyone just falls about laughing and saying "hey we werent ready, can we have another go"?


It is more likely to reduce the risk of shootings and increase the risk of more violent interrogation techniques.

I disagree.

[ForAllOfThis]

Ok.

I just think your underestimating the intelligence of the officers in the army. I think they will know the risks of using the devices. I'd imagine they will be used by interrogation officers, who will carry on using their normal techniques along side monitoring their biological responses.



Apart from the risks to the Americans from unreliably monitored information, how many Afghans are going to be abused, if not actually shot, because of this incredible foolishness? How many villages will be bombed because an informant is thought to be lying when he says there are no Taleban there?

I don't suppose you have any proof either?

I'm not saying this is right by any means. I just think you need to give more credit to the soldiers. Your assuming that they don't know the risks and that they will be making decisions completely based on a lie detector result, which is a wrong assumption.

[SKIRRID5]

The soldiers will know better than to rely wholly on the lie detectors? Why should YOU assume THAT? How many people in America believe in lie detectors? A hell of a lot presumably, since they are so widely used. How many believe in homeopathy, reflexology, or any of the host of pseudo-scientific methods we are always discussing on this forum? Why should a soldier seriously doubt the efficacy of something for which he knows the US Defence budget has paid out $2.5 million? It would be positively unpatriotic for him to do so!
This is not just a case of sniping at America. There are worrying signs of lie detectors creeping into official use in the UK. I wouldn't be too astonished if our forces were issued with the things.

[Fiona]

I do not understand your point, ForAllOfThis. If the soldiers/pentagon/government know the things don't work then why did they spend all that money? If you are so sure they will not be misused then can you give us an example of proper use which might allay some or my unease?

[ForAllOfThis]

Im sure they'll just be used alongside normal interrogation techniques. I don't understand why your assuming the armies will be making blind decisions because 'a lie detector said so'.


The soldiers will know better than to rely wholly on the lie detectors? Why should YOU assume THAT?'

Soldiers are not stupid. Neither are the people creating the devices.


If the soldiers/pentagon/government know the things don't work then why did they spend all that money?

I believe thats a question for the pentagon/goverment. Not me =).

[Fiona]

So we imagine that soldiers have someone in custody and they are asking him questions. And he is answering them. And he may or may not be telling the truth. With or without a lie detector. The soldiers decide he is not telling the truth. With or without a lie detector. Now what?

[VoodooJoe]

Im inclined to agree with ForAllOfThis i cant see other methods of interrogation being discarded in favour of these devices.

Also i dont really see the jump from soldiers being issued with lie detectors to Afghans being abused and villages being bombed.

[VoodooJoe]

They dont work, its dangerous to rely on equipment that does not work. Especially in wartime.


I thought lie detectors had a good success rate? 90-95% (though i do stand to be corrected as im not sure)

[bindeweede]

When a person lies it is assumed that these physiological changes occur in such a way that a trained expert can detect whether the person is lying. Is there a scientific formula or law which establishes a regular correlation between such physiological changes and lying? No. Is there any scientific evidence that polygraph experts can detect lies using their machine at a significantly better rate than non-experts using other methods? No. There are no machines and no experts that can detect with a high degree of accuracy when people, selected randomly, are lying and when they are telling the truth.

http://skepdic.com/polygrap.html



A lie-detector test or machine is a popular, but inaccurate term for the instrument that records various bodily changes that may provide the basis for a reliable diagnosis of truth or falsehood. The correct term for the instrument is a polygraph.
There is no such thing as a lie-detector, lie-detector test, or lie-detector machine if the terms are taken to mean a mechanical test or device that will produce a clear indication of lying when verbal statements are made.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/16/the_odd_body_polygraph/



However, polygraphs are not infallible. In particular, their reliability is reduced if the person who administered the test also interprets the results. But when independent experts judge polygraph test results, they often disagree. A dramatic example was provided in the case of Fred Ely, convicted for a 1978 murder in America. The polygraph evidence that helped convict him was later re-examined by three further experts. One of these judged that Ely was telling the truth, while the other two thought the data were inconclusive. As it happens, Ely was innocent, and the real killers were later caught and convicted.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/psychology/psychology_6.shtml

[ForAllOfThis]

So we imagine that soldiers have someone in custody and they are asking him questions. And he is answering them. And he may or may not be telling the truth. With or without a lie detector. The soldiers decide he is not telling the truth. With or without a lie detector. Now what?

They keep interrogating the prisoner, until they find the truth.

What is your point?

As bindeweed has pointed out, a 'lie detector' instrument is simply a device that measures bodily responses to different statements.


Really? So intel gathered by a machine that cannot work is used to plan an intelligence or counter insurgency operation. Suddenly because the intel was usless and gleaned from a person under extreme duress. The operation goes "tits up" and everyone just falls about laughing and saying "hey we werent ready, can we have another go"?The flaw of your argument is your assumption that the army will only gather intel from the machine to plan an intelligence or counter insurgency operation. Unless you an prove that they are replacing old techniques with the machine or that only the lie detector device will be used to interrogate prisoners then your assumption is unfair. I think it is more likely that the device will be used alongside other techniques and operations will only be planned with substantial evidence, from a variety of techniques and sources.

These people are putting their lives on the line. You can't assume that they will put blind faith into a lie detector device when the cost is so great.

[Janot]

Soldiers are not stupid. Jeez - have you ever met an American soldier?

[DrS]

Are these the colleagues of the soldiers in Abu Ghraib? Or of the ones riding around on top of tanks shouting Die M**********r Die!?

[ForAllOfThis]

You shouldn't judge every soldier based on the behaviour of a single group of soldiers.

[DrS]

No, agreed, but who is to say that these lie detectors don't end up in the hands of such groups?

[SKIRRID5]

Voodo - where do those impressive 90-95% success rate figures come from? I'm pretty sure they come from the people who market polygraphs. And don't forget, it has been admitted that these hand jobs (to coin a phrase!) are less efficient than regular polygraphs.
Someone doesn't see how I jumped to villages being bombed. Well, imagine someone is being questioned, and one of the things the questioners want to know is the status of a particular village - whether or not it's "clean". As we must all concede, merely taking a lie detector test is in itself stressful, and Afghans are hardly likely to be familiar with the experience. The man says the village is not inhabited by enemy militia, and because he's stressed the red light goes on. Ah, you may say, the Americans wouldn't start bombing on such uncertain evidence. Maybe a lot of them wouldn't. But remember, a former highly placed American, Dick Cheney, spawned the amazing 1% maxim - if there is a 1% chance of an enemy country developing dangerous weapons, that is sufficient reason for a preventive invasion by the US. That wasn't some right-wing survivalist in Arkansas - it was someone very important. So is it really so unfair to suspect that at least some military officers might choose to bomb that hypothetical village, just in case?

[ForAllOfThis]

So is it really so unfair to suspect that at least some military officers might choose to bomb that hypothetical village, just in case?

Yes. The army would not bomb an entire village with possible civilians living their, based on the results of one lie detector result. What you are suggesting seems unlikely and unrealistic. Furthermore you have no evidence that this could happen.


No, agreed, but who is to say that these lie detectors don't end up in the hands of such groups?

Who says they do?

[DrS]

Who says they do?No-one is saying they do, just that they could.

[SKIRRID5]

ForAllOfThis - I have no evidence that it could happen? I'm not sure how one finds evidence that something could happen. Although generally it is unfair to ask for proof of a negative, I think that here it is up to you to state why you are so sure it couldn't. In fact, my remark about Dick Cheney surely provides evidence of a mindset that really could lead to disasters. Something as major as the invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, or perhaps deliberate misrepresentation of intelligence, which would be just as bad.

[ForAllOfThis]

Something as major as the invasion of Iraq was based on faulty intelligence, or perhaps deliberate misrepresentation of intelligence, which would be just as bad.

The media has portrayed the war on iraq as 'faulty intelligence' or 'deliberate misrepresentation'. Unless your accusing the goverment of a conspiracy against the british and american public.

There were good reasons for the war in iraq (such as getting rid of a bad leader) and if you say 'well then why haven't the army left yet?' the answer is simple. If they had left as soon as they had taken down sadam then they would of been acused of leaving the country in ruin. If they stay then they get accused of conspiring to steal all of the oil. Still this is going off at a bit of a tangent.

The world expected America to prove that Iraq could initiate an attack on the western world. If American and British soldiers did not go into Iraq then Iraq had attacked first, the media and everyone else would have slated them for not striking first. We should be learning from mistakes that were shown in the second world war such as doing nothing until its too late. Its a lose - lose situation for the goverment always with the media. Therefore I think the goverment did the right thing.


In fact, my remark about Dick Cheney surely provides evidence of a mindset that really could lead to disasters.Actually you misinterpreted the statement to fit what you were trying to prove. One mans opinion, about countries developing dangerous weapons, is not evidence to suffice that an army would blow up a village because theres a 1% chance that there might be an enemy presence. Therefore I do not count this as any type of evidence.

[DrS]

There were good reasons for the war in iraq (such as getting rid of a bad leader)But these weren't the reasons given.

If American and British soldiers did not go into Iraq then Iraq had attacked first, the media and everyone else would have slated them for not striking first.
What could Iraq have attacked given that it seems not to have had the weapons that were claimed? This is because the attack was based on faulty intelligence, or misrepresentation of intelligence.

[ForAllOfThis]

Iraq has an army, missiles, tanks etc.

Weapons of mass destruction are not the only weapons that are capable of killing people.

[DrS]

No, but they're the only weapons that were responsible for the invasion.

[SKIRRID5]

It isn’t reasonable, in discussing the danger of tardy reaction to enemies, to compare the Iraq affair with World War II. By the time Britain declared war on Germany (and most certainly by the considerably later date when America entered the war) it didn’t require intelligence operations to discover what Hitler was up to.
To say “Suppose we hadn’t invaded Iraq and then Iraq had attacked us, how would we have looked then?” sounds uncomfortably like the Cheney 1% doctrine, applied after the event.
Regarding said Cheney, sorry to keep banging on at this, but one simply cannot dismiss his idea as “one man’s opinion”. As I said before, he wasn’t some redneck survivalist or backwoods senator, he was, for Pete’s sake, the United States Vice President!
At the risk of further annoyance to supporters of the Iraq invasion, I ‘ll state my belief that the US invaded for one reason, and that was not to remove a dictator (who’d been in power for years without any suggestion of invasion), nor was it to uncover hidden weapons (though that was the excuse peddled at the time). It was America’s urge, in its unassuaged rage at September 11, to kill some more Muslims. Since Bush was comfortably re-elected, it appears the US public approved at the time.As for Tony Blair’s motivation, it was probably the unfortunate urge, shared with other Prime Ministers over the last few decades, to prove himself a mini Winston Churchill.

[ZERO]

FAOT, your rose coloured view of the US and it's military is amazing.

The reasons for the Iraq invasion are a web of lies.
The subsequent treatment of the Iraqi population is horrible and, not uncommonly, criminal.

These stupid lie detectors are not going to make anything better and if I had to bet, I would say it will be worse.

The US has mired itself in another situation they can not win. America seems unable to successfully pursue a counter-insurgency conflict. They are making the same fundamental mistakes they always do: over reliance on fire power and turning the civilian population into enemies by their actions.

[brettdbass]

There is a possibility that we're not being fed the whole story here, let us remember.

This is only supposition and conjecture on my part:-

Perhaps these devices might be used in conjunction with traditional interrogation techniques as a new tool of persuasion.
"Look here Mr Terrorist bloke, we have a lie detector machine here that knows when you lie so you'd better tell us the truth now - if you don't we'll know about it and then so will you".
If this were the case, it might be based on the premise that the avergae Afghani insurgent is aware of polygraphs but not aware that they don't work, as is likely the case with the majority of the population worldwide.
In this circumstance it would, of course, be imperative that the devices are publicly marketed as an effective, functional device. The interrogators however, would have to understand that they provide no evidence whatsoever.

[Admin]

Polygraphs or lie detectors lack validity (they do not measure lies) and they lack reliability (results differ depending upon who's doing the test) thus rendering them practically useless.

These new devices are said to be even less reliable than ordinary polygraphs - that means they will be unlikely to be much more accurate than flipping a coin to determine whether someone is telling the truth. And they are being deployed for use in a war zone! It beggars belief.

At best their use in this military situation is pointless and at worst could be dangerous.

If the military recognise that these lie detectors are not reliable and that other measures (such as the ones they already have in place) will also need to be used then what is the point of using them? Their usage is entirely superfluous.

On the other hand, if these devices are taken as being useful and reasonably reliable (which I suspect they will be) then depending on what they're used for, their usage could be potentially disastrous.

Polygraph devices, and their operators, are notorious for giving false positive readings (indicating lying when there's none) and for giving false negatives (indicating truth when the person is lying). If any results of a polygraph test are taken seriously then a false conclusion could obviously be catastrophic in a war situation.

And then there's the fact that polygraph devices can be fooled. If I was a Mujahadeen leader, I'd be training my troops up in passing polygraph tests...

[ForAllOfThis]

Regarding said Cheney, sorry to keep banging on at this, but one simply cannot dismiss his idea as “one man’s opinion”. As I said before, he wasn’t some redneck survivalist or backwoods senator, he was, for Pete’s sake, the United States Vice President!

If he said he could fly like superman would that be evidence that he does? Of course not. His opinion is no greater than anyonee elses, the only difference between his opinion and an ordinary persons is that his is heard by more people.


FAOT, your rose coloured view of the US and it's military is amazing.

Your opinion =).

IMO, You are making incorrect assumptions about soldiers and the people who are creating the devices.

[Fiona]

It seems to me that these things add nothing except an excuse for atrocities. "What?.....we based this action on the lie detector. You want we should put soldiers lives at risk by ignoring the evidence?"

ForAllOfThis, have you never heard of any atrocities carried out by serving soldiers?

[ForAllOfThis]

Of course.

Still I've already pointed out that I highly doubt that they will use it the lie detectors alone to determine if someone is lieing, so I believe they will need more evidence before the 'atrocitiy' is justified.

[Fiona]

As John Jackson has already said: what will these unreliable and invalid devices add? Spin, is what, IMO :smiley:

[SKIRRID5]

I give up. Arguing with this person is like banging your head against a wall.

[ForAllOfThis]

I am well known to be stubborn. I understand what your saying and I agree that the lie detectors are a bad idea as they can serve no use. I just feel that you should give the soldiers more credit =). I think that their lives are on the line so they are going to be cautious with any new equipment, especially as most technology is highly un-reliable anyway (I wonder how many computers crash per day ::)).