To prevent another world war : truth detection
The argument is simple: given matched power, at any level from maximal armament to none at all, opposing nations will resort to actual warfare overwhelmingly as a result of mistrust of the other or of misunderstanding resulting from false information-either suspected or actual. My solution is to insure that public or other official statements made by key figures are indeed true. This can be done with available lie detection techniques if national leaders will submit to them. Given an agreement to try, the operational procedures and instrumental techniques could readily be tested and perfected in real life situations of lesser moment than international warfare.
From Detection to Surveillance: U.S. Lie Detection Regimes from the Cold War to the War on Terror
When the polygraph was developed in the early twentieth century, its creators promised a reliable security technology that would furnish mutual trust between individuals, in corporations, and between government and citizens. The history of the use of the lie detector, however, shows that it was not a reliable technology and often exacerbated distrust and conflicts due to the confrontational methodology and the unsubstantiated assumptions governing its use. This history shows that security concerns—namely, the need to uphold a posture of deterrence—and bureaucratic prerogatives of the Central Intelligence Agency made the polygraph nevertheless useful. However, a regime of security did not lead to conditions of trust. This insight is crucial for an understanding of early twenty-first truth technologies based on surveillance that appears less intrusive than lie detection via the polygraph. Security technologies such as brain scanning or biometrics rely on similarly flawed assumptions about human physiology and the possibility of its representation through technology as well as ideological assumptions about the proper social relationships between individuals and between government and citizens, none of which tend to favor mutual trust.
Modification of the Marston Deception Test
In his latest article in this JOURNAL, Marston describes a test whereby deception or the emotional syndrome involved in lying may be detected in an individual. In brief, he studies the changes in the systolic blood pressure which are produced by emotional disturbance (4). According to his description he has obtained 100 per cent accuracy in cases upon which the tests were tried, both in court cases and upon a number of individuals in an army test. Before mentioning his own technique, Marston sums up, or rather criticizes, the hitherto prevalent methods for the determination of the presence of emotional disturbances. For our own purpose it may be well to mention them briefly.