PBS will be airing a new documentary, “The Lie Detector,” in their American Experience series on January 3 . The film draws extensively on Northwestern Professor of History Ken Alder‘s book, The Lie Detectors.
Alder, the Milton H. Wilson Professor of the Humanities at Northwestern, served as a talking head and consultant on the show.
Both Alder’s book and the PBS documentary tackle complex and crucial topics of police reform and police violence in America – including the unintended consequences of bringing scientific methods to bear on the practice of justice in this country.
The PBS website describes “The Lie Detector” below:
“In the first decades of the 20th century, when life was being transformed by scientific innovations, researchers made a thrilling new claim: they could tell whether someone was lying by using a machine.
Popularly known as the “lie detector,” the device transformed police work, seized headlines and was extolled in movies, TV and comics as an infallible crime-fighting tool. Husbands and wives tested each other’s fidelity. Corporations routinely tested employees’ honesty and government workers were tested for loyalty and “morals.”
But the promise of the polygraph turned dark, and the lie detector too often became an apparatus of fear and intimidation. Written and directed by Rob Rapley and executive produced by Cameo George, The Lie Detector is a tale of good intentions, twisted morals and unintended consequences.”