I note from a report in Science for September 3 that the fiercely disputed technique of polygraphy to detect falsehoods and areas of emotional tension is spreading in the United States, where the Department of Energy is planning to subject some 5,000 researchers and other employees at its three nuclear weapons laboratories to lie detector testing. Not unexpectedly, a petition has been launched by scientists at Los Alamos to restrict this practice on the grounds that polygraphy and its interpretation are unreliable and that its wide obligatory application might well damage morale and undermine efforts to recruit sound researchers.
The proposed extension of polygraphy testing has been prompted by the recent allegations that China has been handed information regarding US nuclear weapons. There are serious doubts whether the imposition of periodical testing can be avoided in the current political climate. Its effects would be sweeping, since up to 20,000 individuals would be affected by the regulation. Although the examination would be termed "voluntary", anyone declining to undergo it would be penalised in his or her career. Moreover, no lawyer or other witness would be permitted to observe the testing sessions as a check on their bona fide application and interpretation.
Many scientists hold that polygraphy is an unreliable way of testing an individual's integrity, and that in any event there are methods for falsifying results which can be practised by dishonest individuals.
A similar criticism has been raised over the psychological examination of disturbed people using the "recovered memory" technique, which involves patients given medications and subjected to hypnotherapy and regression therapy in an attempt to recall incidents in their history which indicate some kind of child abuse, particularly of a sexual nature. This is based on the Freudian concept of repression, in which disturbing ideas, especially those of an aggressive or sexual character, are shut out of the conscious mind, without the awareness of the subject, as part of a defence mechanism to protect the personality. Many psychiatrists believe that such repressed ideas can be drawn to the surface without undue distortion, while others regard such recoveries as suspicious and possibly contaminated.
Psychiatrists in Britain are deeply divided over whether ideas disinterred in this way can properly be used in medico-legal situations and social service decisions. Guidelines are being produced by the British Psychological Society on the evaluation of recovered memory, since serious social or legal disability may result if the findings turn out to be spurious or inaccurate. According to the society, there is no proof that "recovered memory" exists or that it does not exist. And there is a charity, the British False Memory Society, which aims to help individuals and their families in cases where alleged recovered memories may be misleading or false.
In all intensive psychological interrogations there is an alarming possibility that ideas may be implanted rather than uncovered, resulting in false confessions and unfounded conclusions. Memory, at the very best of times, has a habit of being completely misleading.
There is nothing new in these doubts over repressed memories. A report in the Lancet for June 6, 1998, described a fierce controversy over the nature of memory itself, its repression, and its recall. The attitude that anyone undergoing mental suffering must be the victim of someone else's fault and that that person must be exposed is attributed to what has been called "cluster B personality disorder", a state of mind which renders the sufferer frustrated and hostile to any criticism.