FBI File of Lie Detector's Creator

George Maschke writes, "It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot.' He is alleged to have misrepresented the result of a study he conducted for the Gillette razor company in 1938, for which he reportedly received some $30,000, a handsome sum in those days. Despite these misgivings, the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth) to guide investigations as well as to screen applicants and employees. You can download Marston's FBI file here (736 KB PDF)."

Reciprocate

That's ok with me, as I happen to consider the FBI to be a bunch of phonies and crackpots themselves.

A way out?

Is there any chance that this could be used in court cases to challenge polygraph test results? After all, if the FBI believes that the machine's inventer was a lunatic, couldn't it be argued that perhaps his so-called "lie detector" is inaccurate and inadmissable as evidence?

Re:A way out?

As shown recently on MythBusters, Cleve Backster [backster.net] the man that originated the comparison test used by most law enforcement agencies to determine the results of a polygraph test spent most of his career using those tests on plants.

From any interview [derrickjensen.org] given in 1997

... the imagery entered my mind of burning the leaf I was testing. I didn't verbalize, I didn't touch the plant, I didn't touch the equipment. The only new thing that could have been a stimulus for the plant was the mental image. Yet the plant went wild. The pen jumped right off the top of the chart.

If that won't convince someone about the accuracy of the test, I don't think TFA will.

Re:A way out?

Is there any chance that this could be used in court cases to challenge polygraph test results?

Polygraphs are already inadmissable as court evidence, and can no longer be used to screen employees. Pretty much the only area you'll run into them is in federal jobs requiring security clearance. Investigators also use them on occasion to determine if the suspect is misleading them during an investigation, but the results can't be held against the subject of the test.

The truth is that the polygraph is a form of psychological testing. The results are meaningless unless the "operator" is a well trained psychologist. Even then, he may be unable to extract the "truth" from you; partly because "truth" is a subjective matter. In addition, some people don't do well (or do TOO well) under stress testing. So the results can be bogus in those cases. Basically, polygraphs are unreliable at best, and should never be counted on for accurate information.

Re:A way out?

The truth is that the polygraph is a form of psychological testing. The results are meaningless unless the "operator" is a well trained psychologist. Even then, he may be unable to extract the "truth" from you; partly because "truth" is a subjective matter. In addition, some people don't do well (or do TOO well) under stress testing. So the results can be bogus in those cases. Basically, polygraphs are unreliable at best, and should never be counted on for accurate information.

Indeed, the best description I've heard of a polygraph test is that it's a little theatrical play designed to trick the gullible into confessing and/or acting guilty.

Wonder woman born from a polygraph, wow!

That's pretty interesting that the basic blood pressure based lie detector that William Marston created formed the basis behind the Wonder Woman comics (e.g. he "proved" in his tests that women are more honest than men).

Strange that the FBI now relies so heavily on polygraph's when their initial assessment of the device was so negative, and most current research shows them to be relatively inaccurate [antipolygraph.org].

When 6 blades aren't enough

Now with lie detection !!!

correct category?

Is this really your rights online?

Is the FBI going to jump out of my cable modem and polygraph me?

Bondage

He wasn't so interested in lie detection, he just liked tying people up. A lie detector that didn't require strapping things on people wouldn't interest him. Look at what happened to so many women in the WW comics.

Yawn.

That's not an investigative file. That's just his correspondence with Hoover's office. There's not even anything from Hoover himself in there. Nor anything from Tolson. It's staff people in Hoover's office. Helen Gandy was Hoover's secretary.

What if a high false positive rate doesn't matter?

According to the studies linked from the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph) it seems that while the test has a high false positive rate, the false negative rate is lower than one would expect of random chance. Does anyone read it otherwise?

While I think it would be abhorrent to allow such a device to be used against a defendant in our criminal justice system, it the above is true it doesn't seem to me so unreasonable at all that it be used in the hiring of FBI and CIA agents and the like.

A better chance of keeping Russian and Chinese spies out of our security forces may very well outweigh turning away candidates incorrectly classified as deceitful.

Whereas in matters of criminal justice most seem to agree it is better that 10 guilty men should go free than that 1 innocent man should be condemned.

Also, I've always wondered whether this isn't really more of a "nervousness test" than anything else.

Re:What if a high false positive rate doesn't matt

According to the studies linked...it seems that while the test has a high false positive rate, the false negative rate is lower than one would expect of random chance. ...if the above is true it doesn't seem to me so unreasonable at all that it be used in the hiring of FBI and CIA agents and the like.

As clearly demonstrated by the above mentioned stats, the problem is that polygraphs achieve their low false negative by basically lowering the thresholds, casting a wider net of "guilt" and snaring more innocent people. I can guarantee a 0% false negative rate-- so long as you let me declare everyone who walks in the door "deceptive". Polygraph is just theater. It's pretty much bog-standard interrogation techniques dressed up with a few electronic props to trick people into essentially admitting guilt.

Pointless

The polygraph is useless. It's not a "lie detector". At best, it's a "nervousness" detector. It's utterly useless against anyone who can lie without exhibiting any physiological symptoms - sociopaths, for instance.

Of course he's a crackpot.

There's no way Wonder Woman's breasts could be that perky. It defies physics! And who but a crackpot would create an invisible aircraft that left the pilot perfectly visible?

Slashdot is getting silly(ier)

Because no one who invented anything, let alone a tool that the FBI uses, could ever be dishonest. Not even one time.

I wonder if the FBI uses ReiserFS on any of their computers?

Crackpots's do some things right occasionally ...

just look at Emacs.

He didn't actually receive $30,000

The FBI file actually says that the deal fell through, and that he stood to make 30k if he could make the study appear favorable to Gilette. Apparently he couldn't do this because he couldn't get the guy who was helping him with the study to help with the lie. Since it turned out that the study showed half preferred the gilette blade and half the generic. This doesn't prove that the lie detector doesn't work, but it might prove that gilette blades of that time period were no better than generic blades. Some FBI person wrote on the bottom of the page, "I always thought this fellow Marston was a phony, and this proves it". He obviously already didn't like the guy when he wrote this. So yes, he did try to lie about some test results to make some money off of gilette, but overall, the file seems like pretty good stuff. Included are letters and memos that talk about how the FBI was excited about the publication of Marston's book, and also Marston's letter to the President offering his services and expertise when the US joined WW2. Gotta love how /. submitters try to swing the story their way.

The First Prototype

"It appears that the FBI considered William Moulton Marston (1893-1947), who invented the lie detector and created the comic book character Wonder Woman under the pseudonym Charles Moulton, to be a 'phony' and a 'crackpot."

Am I the only one who got a mental image of Marston excitedly waving around a piece of yellow rope, trying to convince the FBI agents that it was the Lasso of Truth?

He *was* a crackpot

The polygraph doesn't pass any scientific validity tests. It is an interrogation device, that's all. See The Lie Behind the Lie Detector [antipolygraph.org].

Implication being?

The unspoken implication being that anyone who is considered a crackpot, liar, or cheat by a government's law enforcement could not be a legitimate inventor? Or that their inventions are faulty? The device should be judged on its own merits.

Just as bad as

workplace drug testing. Most drugs are either not detectable unless you did them a few hours before hand (or in the case of LSD, less than an hour) and the deadliest in sheer body count, alchohol, usually isn't tested for at all.

Worthless. The only function it seems to serve is to remind people who are the serfs and who are the masters.

How lie detectors actually work

Lie detectors are not a device that detects lies of the interrogated, its a device that enables the interrogator to lie. He tells you that he can detect when you are lying, and maybe you believe him so say thing you might normally censure. However he can also interpret your responses to meet his own agenda. If he has no legal basis to fire you, not hire you, or discredit you, he can use a lie detector as a way to implicate that you are a liar. Since the results of a polygraph are tantamount to biorhythms, there is no way to effectively dispute the results. If you get your own polygraph expert to interpret results to say that you werent lying, then the results are declared 'inconclusive' which still holds the implication. Even refusing to take a polygraph implicates you.

Glad I'm not American

In the 20th and 21st Centuries we should know better than to use lie detectors and pychos I mean psychics.

IT'S NOT A LIE DETECTOR.

Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ, when are people going to quit using that stupid, wishful-thinking name for that pile of voodoo?

When lazy bureacrats in law enforcement convince themselves that they can just use a machine to save them the trouble of real detective work, we get results like Aldrich Ames getting nearly every CIA agent in Russia killed. We see cold-blooded killers able to convince the cops that they're clean, and any number of innocent people having their lives ruined because "the machine said so".

There's a REASON why polygraphs aren't admissibile in court, and the reason is that judges aren't quite as easily fooled as politicians (thank goodness for small favors.)

Marston was as much of a charlatan as L. Ron Hubbard. It disgusts me how much we taxpayers have paid, and continued to pay for a fucking E-meter.

-jcr

Why is this coming out now?

Do we believe this is really the FBI file? :)

Easily defeated

The lie detector is a bunch of worthless nonsense. And as soon as you realize this, you will easily defeat it.

If you however believe it works accurately, and the result can result in severe punishment, it works great on you.

A sucessfull politician is a good example of how easy it is to defeat a lie detector. They can lie all day, and maybe even believe in the it themself.

they bought the wrong technology

the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth)

Well, then the FBI was stupid; they should have bought the Lasso of Truth from Marston.

Fingerprints Also Questionable

For the past few years, even fingerprints (the real ones on the end of our fingertips) have been analyzed to be much less reliable [justicedenied.org] than the absolute standard they are often assumed.

The FBI is in the business of convincing judges, not necessarily rigorous scientific proof. Science and facts are props used in the "justice theater" that is the law, quite different from actual justice.

Busy dude.

http://www.intesiresources.com/cd_29.aspx [intesiresources.com]

Living with 2 chics, drawing comics, creates Wonderwoman, Lie Detector, some SelfHelp Theory.

Seems like a geek god of some sort.

FBI should kneel before him

He created one of the hottest pieces of superheroine ass in history. What else is needed? Props are due, dogs.

I bet the FBI would get better results...

the FBI today uses Marston's creation (the polygraph, not the Lasso of Truth) to guide investigations as well as to screen applicants and employees.

I'd venture to say that a good number of FBI suspects would tell the truth more with a busty woman in an american flag bikini and tiara tying them up with cliched requests for information than when hooked to a lie detector.

IronChefMorimoto

How to Detect Lies Without A Lie Detector

http://www.blifaloo.com/info/lies.php [blifaloo.com]

Please read:

(insert overused trollish and yet in this case applicable off-topic wiki link here)

OT

Man, are you paying 200 per fuck? Maybe it's time I leave Brasil and go back to Europe....