The best method yet devised for detecting spoken untruth is comparing suspicious claims to physical evidence. Attempts to distinguish truth from lies by observation of movements of face or body, administration of drugs, or measuring a few physiological variables, are likely to wind up on the heap of retired truth-extraction techniques like trial-by-ordeal (e.g., dunking an accused witch) or trial-by-combat (judicial duel with the survivor’s story judged true).

America has excellent (but not perfect) procedures for settling disputes among citizens in civil court and attributing guilt for crimes based on evidence arising from the actions of the offense. Yet, America always has an audience for the alternative — including non-investigative, alternative methods to detect lies and withheld truths.

Experts decipher the meanings of eye movements or gestures. Exotic drugs called truth serums supposedly do “in vino veritas” one better. A machine that measures breathing, sweating and heart rate, is fitted onto the interviewee after a practice session and elaborate explication of the examiner’s expertise and the machine’s reliability. (If it’s the machine detecting lies, why do examiners boast expertise? A microwave heats food whether the button is punched by Gordon Ramsay or a toddler).

The American justice system requires patience of participants and citizens. This virtue can be difficult for police wanting to reassure the community with a rapidly apprehended suspect.

Currently, popular non-investigative techniques for detecting deception are labeled body language. The directions of eye movements align with retrieving a memory or constructing a lie (or an insect may have darted behind the interrogator). Another popular topic in the lie-detecting discussion is “micro-expressions” — facial movements too quick to be seen in real time. Being visible during review of slowed-down video isn’t useful in the moment, when the interviewee is speaking.

Also lumped into body language are interrogators’ efforts to influence the interviewee with intentional non-verbal gestures or positioning (positioning a chair between the suspect and the door, and moving closer to impress the individual to prevent a quick exit from the room). Interrogators usually control the time and place of questioning, and often question a suspect two-on-one.

It’s not impossible such methods were used in previous centuries and it seems silly for modern people to believe such ordinary human behavior is some new learning. Unfortunately, people who use and promote the concept of consistent meaning for body movements, especially with law enforcement credentials, may unwittingly contribute to the public embrace of incorrect ideas about communication and investigation.

A very popular You Tube channel, The Behavior Panel, features 3 retired US military interrogation professionals and a former actor/acting coach. They post lengthy, entertaining and detailed examinations of videos featuring interrogations, journalists’ interviews or public statements. Scott Rouse worked for the FBI, Secret Service, Military Intelligence and the Department of Defense. Greg Hartley taught interrogation and resistance to interrogation in the US Army. Chase Hughes worked in US Navy military intelligence. Mark Bowden is the actor and acting teacher. All have written books. All come across as likable.

With surprising frequency, the panelists’ observations center on the actual words spoken, and contradictions in the narratives being woven by the speakers. It’s unfortunate that the panelists misattribute their success to current lie-detection fads, instead of crediting their own formidable experience and other potential assets.

The former military panelists are physically impressive, tall and fit, well-spoken and quick-witted. These three guys definitely have multiple serious advantages questioning someone wanting to keep secrets or speak lies. Yet these experts (with impressive careers and results) consistently focus on hokum that sounds like this: He itched his nose. Blood vessels expand when someone is stressed. I would press him on that.

I watch, wondering how they fail to consider how confessions might be hastened by the physically intimidating effect of a huge, bald, senior military officer leaning down close to an interviewee’s face. I’d be a wreck, even if he were only offering me a mint.

Having an actor/acting coach on their team is an odd choice. The actor’s job is to weave together particular ways of speaking and moving into a fiction the audience finds convincing. Theatrical conventions change over the generations. Elizabethan audiences found teen boys completely convincing playing Ophelia and Lady Macbeth. Thanks to the invention of film, we can see that the theatrical naturalism of late 19th and early 20th century theater was very unlike Marlon Brando’s mid-20th century mumbling. Can we expect the acting profession to give us a consistently readable language of gesture and random movements?

There’s one situation when an unreliable technique for truth extraction might be useful. Joe Kenda, a former detective who opines about police work on TV, doesn’t believe polygraph machines detect deception. But, if interrogating someone who believes the machine can reveal dishonesty, Kenda would threaten — even use — a polygraph. That’s not the machine, but the suspect’s belief, that’s extracting truth.

If word choices, gestures, body positions, or eye movements could be consistently linked with dishonesty or holding secrets, wouldn’t the details have been decoded long ago? How useful it would have been, especially before forensic science, to reliably detect lying and withholding truth.

If such a consistently decipherable physical language did exist, the game of poker would never have come to be, and Las Vegas would be more or less a gas station and a convenience store on the highway to LA.

Unfortunately, people desperate for, or believing in, shortcuts to the truth, will keep reinventing procedures for interpreting gestures and twitches like tea leaves — which won’t work any better than just reading tea leaves.

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