Can a brain scan prove you’re telling the truth? – tech – 06 February 2007 – New Scientist Tech
If you saw the latest episode of “24”, you saw a MRI-like brain scan, which told Jack that his brother was lying to him during interrogation.
Insurance companies are helping to popularise a new “truth-telling” industry in the US which uses brain scans to determine whether or not people are lying. But experts are already questioning the ethics and validity of such tests.
Jonathan Marks, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, while researching the subject at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, recently saw a copy of a confidential document that describes the use of MRI to examine the responses of suspects’ brains to keywords that could betray knowledge of enemy activity. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union are similarly suggestive.