We have a need to believe what our leaders are saying. But, even with recourse to technology, that’s easier said than done
It’s a heady time in politics, when so much of our debate centres on what it means to lie. If Boris Johnson didn’t think he was at a party, yet others at the party did, is that a lie? If Rishi Sunak comes out studs first on the matter of his wife’s non-domiciled status, claiming it as a mere function of her nationality, only for that to be debunked by tax experts in a matter of minutes, was that a lie? Or merely a man experimenting with different lines, to see which would hold?
These are obviously the pressing questions of the moment, but I find myself more transfixed by a wonderful book, Tremors in the Blood, published today by the tech journalist Amit Katwala. It tells the story of the lie detector, from the first, gripping murder case for which it was conceived, up to its use today in the justice system. Currently, we exist in a bizarre contradiction: scientifically, lie detection has been debunked. It simply isn’t possible to override a person’s words and listen to their body instead.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
