The New Yorker on Deception Detection

Margaret Talbot’s piece is still behind the firewall, but it’s a good read in that she clearly understands the hype that’s currently behind the notion of using fMRI to build a better lie detector. She interviews some very credible cognitive neuroscientists and does some appropriate digging into who the potential customers for such technologies might be.
Nevertheless, I think she misses the key point I’ve made here before: namely that the most valuable lie to detect really is something much more complex than a lie: namely a hidden altered state of consciousness. A hidden altered state of consciousness may be as simple as hiding one’s state of inebriation, but it might also be as complex as one’s true job as an espionage agent rather than one’s cover story.