Friday, July 20, 2007

Been Slacking on a TECHNOCORRECTIONS Post Lately

So here’s a link to a good post at Deception Blog on a paper discussing the fast evolution of admissibility of brain-imaging info into trials. And here’s part of the abstract to whet your whistle.

Although studies in this area are preliminary, and I conclude they have not yet satisfied the foundational requirements for the admissibility of scientific evidence, the potential for use – particularly as a devastating impeachment threat to encourage factual veracity – is a real one that the legal profession should seek to foster through structuring the correct incentives and rules for admissibility. In particular, neuroscience has articulated basic memory processes to a sufficient degree that contemporaneously neuroimaged witnesses would be unable to feign ignorance of a familiar item (or to claim knowledge of something unfamiliar). The brain implementation of actual lies, and deceit more generally, is of greater complexity and variability. Nevertheless, the research project to elucidate them is conceptually sound, and the law cannot afford to stand apart from what may ultimately constitute profound progress in a fundamental problem of adjudication.

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