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Potentially offering a powerful new tool against terrorism, researchers have found a novel way to detect deception: in the liar’s blushing face.
The technique, described in the journal, Nature, uses a thermal camera to detect sudden, involuntary shifts of blood flow in the face. The system performed as accurately as a traditional polygraph, the scientists report.
Yet the camera can provide answers instantly, and does not require a highly trained specialist to operate it or interpret its results. This makes it far better suited than the polygraph for a new, high-tech approach to security that is already raising the hackles of civil libertarians: the screening of large numbers of citizens, at airports and other sensitive areas, who have done nothing wrong.
"The next decade is going to see the development of truly accurate lie detectors," said Stephen M. Kosslyn, an expert on detecting lies and a professor of psychology at Harvard University.
The prototype, built by researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Honeywell Laboratories in Minnesota, is at least 2 years from being ready for general use. But other scientists said the discovery of previously unknown physiological changes in the face was itself an important step forward.
"This is potentially very important work, which may open a new window on the mind," said Kosslyn.
Pushed by technological advances, and with fresh interest, since Sept. 11, the discovery is part of a boom in the scientific study of deceit and its detection. Although the lie remains a mysterious phenomenon, researchers in recent years have found a number of new approaches that might replace the polygraph, from brain scans, to subtle changes in eye movement, to sparks of electrical activity that signal a person has seen a victim or a crime scene before.
The new finding, though, is remarkable for its simplicity. When a person tells a lie, the team found, there is a sudden rush of blood to the area around the eyes, according to the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. James A. Levine. Although the change is not: ordinarily visible, the blood warms the skin, causing hands of color to appear through a camera sensitive to heat.
The team devised a computer program that can identify the telltale changes based on the camera images. In testing at the US Department of Defense Polygraph Institute, which trains federal polygraph examiners, the device performed better than polygraphs, with 85 percent accuracy compared with 70 percent for the polygraph.

 

It can safely be inferred that Sept. 11 （）

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