Thu Oct 14, 2004 05:18 PM ET
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most people believe they could easily detect … lying behavior, but in fact most miss a good 50 percent of lies, says deception expert Maureen O'Sullivan of the University of California San Francisco.
But O'Sullivan says she has found a special group -- just 1 percent of those she has tested -- who catch a lie nearly 90 percent of the time.
"We call them wizards," O'Sullivan told a briefing sponsored by the American Medical Association on Thursday. "Wizardry is a special skill that seems magical if you don't have it."
She and her colleagues have so far screened 13,000 people for their ability to catch a liar on videotape. "We found 14 people who we called ultimate experts," she said.
They could tell when people deliberately lied about feelings, committing a crime or their own opinions.
Another 13 were good at detecting specific types of lies. For example, she said, "There was a group of cops who got very good scores -- they got 80 percent or more on crime but none of them did well on the video about feeling."
Asked what happened to the other members of the group of wizards, O'Sullivan stared blankly. When a reporter from Science Times explained that 1% of 14,000 would be 140, whereas O'Sullivan had only identified 27 so-called "wizards," O'Sullivan began twitching furiously and said "well, they're wizards, aren't they? Clearly, they have the ability to confuse mortals and hide their true numbers."
Asked if her phrase "Wizardry is a special skill that seems magical if you don't have it." Might apply to the use of statistics, O'Sullivan replied "Sta-what?!?"
A very patient reporter from the New York Times then asked how useful it was to be able to detect lying 90% of the time, if only a small portion of people lie. In particular, if a detective can detect lying 90% of the time but 10% of the time mistakes the truth for a lie, and he interviews a group of 100 people among whom only 10 are criminals, he'll report detecting 18 criminals - 9 out of ten real liars and 9 out of 90 mistakes.
Asked to address these concerns, O'Sullivan referred reporters to the sponsor of her study - Attorney General John Ashcroft. At first, the Attorney General appeared to misunderstand the question, repeatedly asking "Why would an innocent person claim to be lying?" When it was finally explained, he replied "Innocent people are never questioned, so that there is no chance at all (i.e., less than 51%) of an innocent person being executed. I mean tortured. Incarcerated! We don't torture people. At least, not many. No more than 10% of the suspects. I mean, of the guilty ones."
Reuters Articles Almost Never Wrong, Say Editors
Senior editors for the Reuters news group today proclaimed themselves proud of their service's "unparalleled" reputation for accuracy, noting that almost 90% of their stories were true. "Statistically, that means we're almost never wrong," said Managing editor Thimbletwist von Toasty. "I mean, how much is 10% wrong? That's like, one in a million, practically!"
"Mr. Von Toasty is a great editor," said science correspondent Maggie Fox, "but he's not real good with numbers. Clearly, 10% is almost half. If 13 people out of 14,000 are one percent, then … let's see… carry the two…. 10% would be 13 people out of 140,000, right? No, wait-I got that flipped. It's 14,000% of ten people…. Oh, crap. Well, it's a lot… no, I mean, it's almost never. Yeah, that's right-we're almost never wrong."
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Remember, Kids, the part in bold is actual 100% news-flavored media product.
The rest is the fakey part.
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