James Ball

Will there ever be a reliable lie detector?

The polygram’s failures in the 1920s had drastic results. But there’s no guarantee ‘brain fingerprinting’ will prove any more dependable

Henry Wilkens, strongly suspected of organising his wife’s murder, takes the polygraph test in San Francisco in 1922 and passes. It would prove to be the machine’s first public failure. [Getty Images]

  • Tremors in the Blood: Murder, Obsession andthe Birth of the Lie Detector

    Amit Katwala

    Mudlark, pp. 352, £25

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