Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

Psychics and holistic medicine practitioners frequently speak of the human “aura” or the “human energy field.” The size, color, and type of vibration of this aura or field is said to reveal much about the individual’s health and state of mind, as was noted in chapter 11. That one could actually photograph these auras was first claimed by one Semyon Davidovich Kirlian in 1937 (Singer 1981) and so-called Kirlian photography was bom. This type of photography has been popular with proponents of the paranormal ever since, as they claim it as physical proof of the existence of a mysterious human aura. Kirlian photographs do show impressive, colorful fringes around the borders of living objects. Nonliving objects do not show such fringes. In humans, emotional arousal enhances the fringe (Singer 1981). To obtain a Kirlian photograph, it is necessary to place the object to be photographed into an electrical circuit so that it acts like an electrode. Electricity is then passed through the broken circuit.

There is no doubt that Kirlian photos show a real phenomenon. The question is what causes the pattern of fringes. Pehek, Kyler, and Faust (1976) found that the Kirlian effect was due to moisture present on the object to be photographed. Living things (like the commonly photographed fingers) are moist. When the electricity enters the living object, it produces an area of gas ionization around the photographed object, assuming moisture is present on the object. Thus, “during exposure, moisture is transferred from the subject to the emulsion surface of the photographic film and causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film” (p. 269). If the photograph is taken in a vacuum, where no ionized gas is present, no Kirlian image appears (Cooper and Alt, cited in Singer 1981). If the Kirlian image were due to some paranormal fundamental living energy field, it should not disappear in a simple vacuum. That the Kirlian image is enhanced by emotional arousal can also be easily explained by the presence of moisture. A basic physiological response to arousal is sweating. Thus, aroused individuals will have a greater moisture content on their skin surface and the greater amount of moisture will produce a larger Kirlian image.

Other physical variables also affect the nature of the Kirlian image including the type of film, the type of electrode used, and various other characteristics of the electricity used-some twenty-five variables in all (Singer 1981; Watkins and Bickel 1988–89). But, as Singer says, “No mysterious process has been discovered by mainstream scientists investigating the Kirlian process. The paranormal claims about the photographs seem to have resulted from misunderstandings about the physical processes involved, and lack of expertise in conducting rigorous technical measurements” (pp. 208–208).

Until quite recently it was accepted as a matter of course that polygraphs, or lie detectors, could in fact determine accurately whether a person was telling the truth. The devices were and still are used not only in criminal investigations but also, much more widely, in employment screening. They have also been used in alleged cases of UFO abductions and sightings where “passing a lie detector test” is said to verify that the UFO encounter actually took place. They are also used in government, both by military and security agencies and by civilian departments. In the past few years, lie detectors and the field of polygraphy have been the subject of increasing skepticism.

The basic principle of the polygraph is simple. It measures an individual’s heart rate, respiration rate, and, most important, the electrical conductivity of the skin. All these are measures of physiological arousal, especially skin conductance, which increases when an aroused person sweats. There is little doubt that polygraphs can detect nervousness, which leads to physiological arousal some of the time. However, it is obvious that not everyone is nervous when telling a lie and not everyone is calm when telling the truth. There is no simple correlation between a person’s physiological state and whether he is telling the truth. Studies carried out both in a laboratory situation and in field situations, sometimes using actual criminals (i.e., Kleinmuntz and Szucko 1984), have shown that the polygraph is very inaccurate. Reviews of this research can be found in Lykken (1981, along with an excellent history of lie detection); U.S. Office of Technology Assessment (1983); Saxe, Dougherty, and Cross (1985); and Brett, Phillips, and Beary (1986).

Lykken (1981) has developed what he calls the Guilty Knowledge Test, which evaluates an individual’s physiological reaction to information that only the criminal could have. In Lykken’s hypothetical example, a double murder has been committed. Police officers photograph the bodies in the actual positions where they were found. Additional photographs are taken of each body after it has been moved about the house to different, but equally plausible, locations. An innocent suspect would respond with equal arousal to pictures of the bodies whether they were in the actual or the “posed” positions, assuming that the innocent suspect had not had the opportunity to see the bodies in their correct positions. The murderer, however, Lykken argued, would respond with greater arousal to the picture that only he or she knew to be correct. Laboratory studies of the Guilty Knowledge Test (see Lykken 1981, for a review) have shown it to be quite accurate. Unfortunately, it has been adopted hardly at all for actual field use, so whether it will be as accurate in criminal investigations is unknown.

The Guilty Knowledge Test, at least in the laboratory studies that have been conducted, appears to be difficult to beat (Lykken 1981). The much more common, and crude, form of polygraph test, where the suspect is asked, “Did you kill John Smith on the night of March 4?” is much easier to beat. Voluntary alterations of breathing rate, tensing and untensing of various muscle groups, and even keeping a sharp tack in your shoe and stepping on it to create arousal are all methods of deceiving the device (Lykken 1981; Biddle 1986).

Until the late 1980s, the most common use of polygraphs was not in criminal investigations but in employment situations. Firms, especially those like jewelry stores and banks, where employee theft could be a problem used polygraphs to assess prospective employees’ honesty. Polygraphs were also used in internal investigations within a company. In the late 1980s federal legislation made the use of lie detectors illegal in the great majority of nongovernment employment screenings. In 1986 the CBS television program 60 Minutes broadcast an excellent example of why the use of polygraphs should not be permitted. Several polygraph firms were called by CBS and told that there had been a theft of some valuable television equipment and that a number of CBS employees were suspected. Each firm was asked to come and examine the suspects. In fact, there had been no theft and all the “suspects” knew that they were taking part in an experiment. Each polygraph operator was given a hint that one particular suspect was the leading suspect, but the hint concerned a different employee for each operator. The operators in each case identified the “leading suspect” as the guilty party. Not one operator failed to make this incorrect judgment.

The operators that incorrectly identified the different leading suspects as the guilty party in the 60 Minutes exposé were almost certainly not going along with the hint just to please their client. Rather, they could undoubtedly point to signs in the polygraph output that pointed to the guilt of the party they already suspected was guilty, on the basis of the hint. Those same signs would also have been found, of course, in the results of the tests on the nonleading suspects. But the examiner wasn’t looking for them in those records because he or she had not been primed with any hint. The “interpretation” of the results of a polygraph examination is much the same as the interpretation of dreams or tea leaves. If you know what you’re supposed to find, you’ll find it. Belief in the validity of polygraphs, especially by their operators, is based on the selective nature of memory and constructive perception (in this case, perception of the nature of the lie detector output) that play so large a role in convincing people that psychic predictions, dreams, and hunches are valid. Morand (1976, quoted in Lykken 1981) has described the attitude of polygraph operators when confronted with the evidence that the devices are invalid: “Their response was invariably that the criticisms were not valid because, in their experience, the test worked” (p. 126). This response is nearly identical to that of astrologers or psychoanalysts when they are confronted with the evidence of the lack of validity of their own particular method of divining hidden knowledge.