Educing Information: Interrogation - National Intelligence University

It is apparent that the “adequate theoretical and scientific base” must include a
causal explanation of how the psychological processes involved in deception can
result in the physiological or neurological processes observed during deception.
Unfortunately, such an explanation will not be easy to develop and is unlikely
to be available in the short term. The psychology of deception is not a mature
field, and the neural mechanisms that underlie the ability to intentionally suppress,
distort, or fabricate information are not yet well understood. Consequently, if the
National Research Council is correct in stating that confidence in a given technique
will require a solid theoretical base, then a significant research investment into the
underlying neuropsychological mechanisms of deception must be made before
any practical system for detecting deception can be developed and employed.
Even if the National Research Council is wrong, and the “system first” school
of thought is correct, other problems may need to be solved before any practical
system for deception detection can be developed, tested, and operationally
deployed in the field. These problems are characteristic of experimentation in
an artificial laboratory setting. Such research does not typically result in subjects’
experiencing the same level of threat, motivation, stress, or fear that is likely to be
experienced by a subject in a real-world situation involving detection of deception.
The demographics of the cohorts used in these, usually university, experiments
are likely to differ greatly from those of individuals of interest in the field. These
problems make it difficult to use the findings of laboratory research as a basis on
which to develop a practical deception detection system.
Thus, despite the polygraph’s shortcomings, there is currently no viable
technical alternative to polygraphy. After reviewing the EEG and fMRI deception
detection efforts, as well as some other psychophysiological candidate techniques
(e.g., VSA), the National Research Council concluded that “some of the potential
alternatives show promise, but none has yet been shown to outperform the
polygraph. None shows any promise of supplanting the polygraph for screening
purposes in the near term” (Committee to Review the Scientific Evidence on the
Polygraph, 2002, p. 6–15). This does not imply that these efforts have no value.
On the contrary, the results to date show that these approaches have promise,
and may even be viable in some situations where their level of accuracy is
acceptable. However, much more research is needed if these techniques are to
become operationally useful and reliable in situations that require a higher level
of accuracy.
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