DETECTING LIES

According to this October 30, 2006 article from the"Style Section" of the Washington Post, a new method for detecting lies is being developed:

...By peering directly into our brains, [these new machines] aim to set a new gold standard for the recognition of honesty in everyone from politicians to criminals to lovers.... In the pipeline are several cheaper, faster, easier-to-use brain-examining technologies, all intended as major improvements on the unreliable chicken-scratching polygraph we use now. Some seem to identify mental preparations for telling a lie even before the liar opens his mouth -- verging on mind-reading. Another is meant to work from across the room, even if you do not wish to cooperate....

Several applications of this new technology have been discussed:

[T]he University of Pennsylvania has licensed the technology developed there -- on which it has applied for a patent -- to the California firm No Lie MRI Inc.... No Lie MRI's Web site has proclaimed that the company hopes to revolutionize truth telling in America, offering "objective, scientific, mental evidence, similar to the role in which DNA biological identification is used," to everyone from the FBI, CIA and NSA to the Department of Homeland Security....

The boundless desire for a way to dig through deception is why political consultant John Zogby, president of Zogby International, expects the new brain scanning devices to be in widespread use in the 2008 presidential election. He can clearly see a demand to discover what voters really think of candidates -- and their commercials.

What voters really think of candidates and commercials? How about turning those lie detectors on the candidates themselves!