“A team from Northwestern University claim they have achieved 100 percent accuracy in reading the minds of make-believe terrorists — simply by attaching electrodes to their scalps and examining their brain waves.
For the study, 29 students were given mock terrorist plans and 30 minutes to learn about an attack on a certain U.S. city. They were asked to work out their own details based on information they were given regarding weapons and methods.
The researchers, who also knew about the mock terrorist plans, monitored the students’ brain waves to find out whether they gave away details of where and when the attacks were to take place. They correlated a rise in brain wave activity to guilty knowledge with 100 percent accuracy across all the students that participated.
According to psychology professor J. Peter Rosenfeld, the “guilty” patterns occur in “P300″ brain waves when meaningful information is shown to a person with “guilty knowledge.”
What makes the result so impressive is that in a real-life situation, the knowledge would be much more deeper entrenched, given the months or years of planning that a participant would be subject to.”
Read more at Fox News (Thanks @XxLadyClaireXx)
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There is a fundamental flaw with that research, and that is tge assumption that someone planning such an attack would feel “guilty” about it – if they are planning it, then it is something in which they strongly believe, and therefore they won’t feel guilty; renders the entire test invalid!
Still, trivia like that wouldn’t dissuade it’s use if the powers that be felt it would help them to control the population
Sounds like it’d be a dodgy thing to apply. With a decent imagination all you’d need are a few pointers & you’d have a reasonable chance of implicating yourself in an event…actual or otherwise. The wrong question could give all the clues needed.
There has been the odd person through my life I’ve cheerfully imagined getting the retribution I felt they deserved. However that’s just cathartic purging. If they were ever murdered by someone this method could easily suggest me as the guilty party.
For someone who traps flies under a glass to let them out ‘cos he can’t bear hurting them that’s a scary prospect.
America has simply invented another flawed version of the lie detector. Except this one is more capable of proving the innocent guilty.
Wasn’t this the premise of “Minority Report”?
It never ceases to amaze me at how many ‘far fetched’ ideas come from films or novels then later come into existence. These plans remind me of the concept of ‘pre-crime’ from Minority Report.
I’ve also seen some plans for ‘hypo-sprays’ to replace injections, that idea was originally from Star Treck, which also had the first use of handheld readers like the Amazon Kindle product.
Keep u[p the interesting blogs Derren
Andy PS I feel a blog post is due for this post
Brilliant, except that it’s not guilty knowledge – as demonstrated by the 100% of participants who didn’t go on to commit any crime.
The study also demonstrates a 100% foolproof way of setting someone up by showing them some piece of evidence and then looking to see if they recognise the evidence – which they will, ‘incriminating’ themselves. Don’t like the look of your suspect? Just leak your prior knowledge of some plan to them, then show that they know about it.
wouldn’t be too hard to abuse either, arrest someone who’s in the way/protesting something etc and then oops look their brainwaves say they are a terrorist., Person disappears.
Am I the only one wondering what the heck that pinball machine has to do with anything? I wouldn’t have thought pinball was terribly big in terrorist circles…
@Codified: The pinball machine is used to prime the “suspect” with “knowledge” about an imminent alien attack. Their plan is to attach after the chain of lights on the top left have all been activated.
Otherwise, “Minority Report” came to mind to me as well. Let’s add Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” to that list.
FOXNews.
Nuff said.
Of course this would be invented in America.
“The researchers, who also knew about the mock terrorist plans”
Doesn’t this make it a bit easy to be 100% accurate? Besides that, would the test be able to distinguish between someone planning to blow stuff up and someone planning to cheat on their spouse? Which of those are you more likely to come across when scanning the brain of your average air traveller?
As for the Minority Report comments? That was based on psychics and this isn’t. Psychics don’t exist, and even if we were to credit the Minority Report with any kind of scientific basis, why the hell would the machine etch names on a ball? It would just send an email like every other piece of IT equipment in the world!
thought crimes, eh> how orwellian.
Have to agree with Eddd. The machine catches people who have not committed a crime with 100% accuracy! That’s great for cleaning the streets of people who haven’t done anything wrong. Then you know everyone else is a criminal! This would need to be tested on people who have actually done something wrong, I would think.
The Fox article does go on to say that they did a second test where researchers had no knowledge of the crime, but apparently in all cases they knew the suspects were guilty. It would also be good to see how it works when some people are innocent. Also, what if I have just cheated on my wife, but am suspected of terrorism? How does that affect guilty waves.
Can this system be used by Palestinians to detect when some Israelis are going to come along and steal their home?
While I am not one to defend Fox News (far from it) I believe the article did not say that it could detect whether someone was guilty of something, nor whether they felt guilty about it.
It claimed that it could detect whether the subject had prior knowledge of something they were being shown while in a brain scanner.
For example, a person denies any knowledge of a plot to assassinate Derren, but the police have a set of maps and plans with dates and times.
You plug the perp (hee hee) into the fascist Fox Scanner TM and ask them about a specific detail, for example “have you heard of Mr Magoo’s Chinese Tea Shop and Hardware Store?”. If the suspect knows the place, the scanner would reveal that they are being asked about something they already know.
It is open to abuse, of course, and would definitely be abused by those whose job it is to keep us under control.
You only have to whisper the plans into the suspect’s ear before they are scanned.
Unfortunately it is a potential money-earner and some rather unscrupulous types are probably already planning how to sell ‘crime detection and prevention services’ using ‘state-of-the-art scanning technology’ to ‘Protect the hard-working people of the US’ from all the scummy low life peeps and perps that they fear are surrounding them.
A large proportion of crime is a result of economic inequality and environmental factors.
It is blind luck that us fortunates were born in a supportive environment.
Shall we damn them twice?
EXACTLY!
@Edd says:
Brilliant, except that it’s not guilty knowledge – as demonstrated by the 100% of participants who DIDN”T GO ON TO COMMIT ANY CRIME
Surely the terrorist just wouldn’t talk…
i love pinball
and don’t much appreciate the association of one of my favorite hobbies with such speculative nonsense
hey you kids get offa my lawn, etc.
grrr