Word: detector
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...detector won. In Brooklyn last week Mrs. Edna Hancock, who had pitted her word against that of a lie detector in a recent rape case (TIME, Jan. 10), was indicted for perjury. Her alleged rapist, Murray Goldman, was saved from a ten-year prison sentence...
...case could not alter the fact that lie detectors may sometimes lie,* but that was all right with Mr. Goldman. Mrs. Hancock, an employe of Brooklyn State Hospital, had charged that he broke into her room and tried to rape her. A jury convicted him. But when the lie detector supported his story that he was no stranger to Mrs. Hancock's favors, Judge Samuel Leibowitz went hunting for corroborative evidence. Result: several other men friends of Mrs. Hancock (besides her husband) turned up. She finally admitted that she had met Goldman before. Last week the District Attorney waved...
...Unless there is evidence supporting the detector, there can obviously be no proof that it is telling the truth...
...July 26, Jap radio detector instruments on Kiska picked up "two masses of steel" approaching from east and west. In the thick northern fog a terrific cannonading broke out, then the masses of steel moved away. Later a Jap evacuation fleet entered the harbor unscathed. "Thus the soldiers from Kiska believe that the souls of the deified heroes of Attu had lured the enemy over the sea and made them fight each other by tampering with their wireless instruments...
Courts in general consider lie detectors too unreliable to admit their findings as conclusive evidence. Psychologists are equally skeptical of them. There are now some half-dozen such instruments, depending variously on measurements of blood pressure, breathing, heartbeats, etc., to detect emotional disturbances that are believed to be associated with lying. But, although some inventors claim better than 85% accuracy, proof of a lie detector's infallibility is obviously impossible to obtain. There is no way of guaranteeing that, in some cases, even the best instrument may not tell the wrong story...