Charlatanry and Fraud

an increasing problem for

forensic phonetics?
Anders Eriksson
Department of Linguistics,
Gothenburg University,
Gothenburg, Sweden

Charlatanry and Fraud

Is the problem really increasing,
and if so, in what sense?
In quantitative terms?
In terms of the damage it does?

Charlatanry and Fraud

In my talk I will present two cases
of bogus lie detectors.
Why, one might ask, have I
chosen lie detectors to exemplify
fraud in the field of forensic
phonetics?

Charlatanry and Fraud

Two of the most widely marketed
bogus products today are claimed
to be lie detectors
They are both said to be based on
principles that are correlated with
properties of the human voice.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Let me begin by saying a few
words about the basic ideas
behind so called lie detectors.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Lie detectors are meant to be used
to find the truth or falsity of
statements when it cannot be
determined by logical deduction
or circumstantial evidence

Charlatanry and Fraud

The assumption underlying lie
detectors is that there are
observable behavioral differences
between telling a lie and telling
the truth.

Charlatanry and Fraud

It is generally assumed that one
such observable difference is an
increase in the stress level when
telling a lie.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The most well known lie detector
is the so called Polygraph. Its first
appearance can be dated back to
1917. A more refined version was
used in a court case in 1923 and
Polygraphs have been used ever
since with some refinements.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The basic idea behind the Polygraph
is that if you can register the
involuntary reactions we know to be
correlated with stress (respiration,
pulse, blood pressure, and galvanic
skin respons (e.g.palm sweat),
these signs can be used to detect lies
and deception.

Charlatanry and Fraud

A typical Polygraph setup.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The problem with the Polygraph as a lie
detector is in the interpretation.
Correlations between stress levels and
pulse for example are found as group
results. To generalize from group results
to individuals is, of course, not a valid
step. Nor is it a valid step to conclude
that a person who experiences stress
must necessarily be lying.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The basic idea behind lie detectors
based on voice analysis is that there
are properties in the voice signal that
may be reliably correlated with stress,
and as a consequence with lie and
deception.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Voice stress analysis (VSA), also
called Perceptual Stress Evaluation
(PSE), based on the monitoring of
so called micro tremor is such a
method.

Charlatanry and Fraud

But whereas there are
scientifically established
correlations between stress and
the indicators used by the
Polygraph, there is no scientific
basis for the voice stress analysis
at all.

Charlatanry and Fraud

In the sixties it was discovered
that in larger muscles like the
biceps there is involuntary
tremor, called micro tremor,
with a frequency in the 8 to 12
Hz range.

Charlatanry and Fraud

This gave rise to speculations that the
same phenomenon might be present in
the larynx muscles and that it may
affect the voice source frequency. In
particular it was suggested that the
tremor might vary as a function of
stress in the speaker.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Before anybody had a chance to
investigate the possible occurrence of
micro tremor in the voice, the first lie
detector based micro tremor in the
voice source appeared.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Already in 1981 Shipp and Izdebski
published results from an experimental
study where they used hooked-wire
electrodes inserted into the larynx
muscles in order to investigate the
possible occurrence of micro tremor,
but no micro tremor patterns at all
were found.

Charlatanry and Fraud

And later studies have confirmed
these results.
So what the VSA analyzers do is
measure the variation in something
that isnt even there, in itself an
achievement of sorts.

Charlatanry and Fraud

But they do make pretty diagrams!

Charlatanry and Fraud

If the people who use these gadgets
dont know any better we may be
generous enough to call it charlatanry,
the alternative being fraud of course.

Charlatanry and Fraud

My second example is one which
without the slightest doubt may be
classified as fraud.

Charlatanry and Fraud

An Israeli based company markets
the most wonderful tools including
both lie detectors and love detectors.
The technique behind the lie detector
is said to be something called
Layered Voice Analysis (LVA).

Charlatanry and Fraud

Here is how they claim it works
every event that passes through the
brain will leave its finger prints on
the speech flow. LVA Technology
ignores what your subject is saying,
and focuses only on his brain activity.
In other words, the how it is said is
crucial and not the what.

Charlatanry and Fraud

They are careful not to explicitly call
the gadget lie detector, but there is
absolutely no doubt that that is what
they want us to believe it is:
LVA is capable of detecting the
intention behind the lie, and by so
doing can lead you in identifying and
revealing the lie itself.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Let us have a quick look at how
this product is marketed.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The great LVA hoax

The great LVA hoax

The great LVA hoax

The great LVA hoax

Charlatanry and Fraud

Charlatanry and Fraud

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After this commercial tour let us
have a look at the state of the art
technology that makes all this
possible.

Charlatanry and Fraud

An examination of the description
of the method in the American
patent documents confirms the
suspicion that the method is pure
nonsense, perhaps best described as
statistics based on digitization
artefacts.

Charlatanry and Fraud

The statistics is based upon what is defined as
thorns and plateaus which has no relevance
at all for voice analysis and is moreover
dependent on how the signal is sampled.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Now, who is the guy behind
all this?

Charlatanry and Fraud

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Why is there such a flourishing
market for charlatans?
Why is it so relatively easy to market
gadgets which one would think
anyone should be able to recognize
as bogus?

Charlatanry and Fraud

I think at least a partial answer lies in how
lie detectors and other wonderful tools are
used in films and television series. There
perfectly reliable lie detectors have been
around for a long time.
But crime documentaries which focus on
only the most spectacular successes are
also partly responsible.

Charlatanry and Fraud

For the serious forensic speech scientist this is
becoming a problem. There are two possible dangers.
1. You express yourself with the caution you know
from your experience and from scientific studies is
absolutely necessary, but then run the risk of being
regarded as incompetent because you are unable to
do what people know to be possible from films
and TV.
2. You fall for the temptation to express yourself with
a greater degree of certainty than you should.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Gadgets like these do not deserve to be
taken seriously as such, but their use in
forensic investigations must be. If bogus
lie detectors like the ones described here
are used not just by shady private
investigators, but by insurance
companies, police departments and
security agencies, this poses a threat that
we must oppose more actively.

Charlatanry and Fraud

Thank you for your attention!

Other lie detection attempts

Attempts have been made recently
to use brain scanning methods in
order to study the possibility of
consistent differences in brain
activity patterns which separate lie
or deception from truthful
statements.

Other lie detection attempts

Langleben et al. (2002) used Functional
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to
detect differences in brain activity when
their subjects told a lie compared to when
they told the truth. Their results indicate
that: There is a neurophysiological
difference between deception and truth at
the brain activation level that can be
detected with fMRI. Similar results have
been obtained in other studies.

Other lie detection attempts

High resolution thermal imaging
which can detect minor regional
changes in the blood flow in the face
for example has also been used in an
attempt to develop methods to detect
lie and deception (Pavlidis and
Levine, 2002).

Other lie detection attempts

Experiments of this kind are, of
course, very interesting but it seems
that the people who interpret the
results all make the same mistake as
the Polygraph people, they tend
ignore the false positives problem.

Other lie detection attempts

What if the brain reactions that can
be registered when I tell a lie are
precisely the same as those that
result from scratching my head or
wiggling a toe?

Lie detection
Unproven technologies are
becoming increasingly attractive to
US law enforcement and security
agencies Laboratory tools from
infrared sensors to eye trackers are
being converted into lie detectors
(Knight 2004).