
Is there any truth in truth serums? (2015) - Hooke
https://www.sciencehistory.org/distillations/stranger-than-fiction
======
selfishgene
Several years ago, MIT Professor of Marketing Drazen Prelec proposed a
"mathematical truth serum" which he claimed could help government agencies
predict future terrorist events. The MIT Sloan School of Management and Draper
Laboratory used his work to win a $12 million grant from IARPA under the ACE
program. The only justification provided for using the mathematical truth
serum (a trivial application of KL-divergence) was that it would "promote
honesty" among intelligence analysts who may hold divergent opinions.

Unfortunately, honesty on the part of MIT and Draper Laboratory was in short
supply during the bid and proposal process. Federal prosecutors were tipped
off shortly after the program was funded, prompting IARPA to swiftly cancel
the contract.

~~~
mgraczyk
I think this is a fairly inaccurate mischaracterization of Prelec's work and
BTS. If you search "bayesian truth serum" on Google scholar, you'll find that
there are hundreds of papers from credible researchers based or inspired by
Prelec's work. Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn't
be credited with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design. Also
the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are pretty
mainstream.

I hadn't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn
more, but you should include some citations before trashing influential,
interesting work.

Paper from Science, worth reading:
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drazen_Prelec/publicati...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Drazen_Prelec/publication/8231017_A_Bayesian_Truth_Serum_for_Subjective_Data/links/0deec51bb0d8741001000000/A-Bayesian-
Truth-Serum-for-Subjective-Data.pdf)

~~~
selfishgene
_Just because the math is simple does not mean Prelec shouldn 't be credited
with having introduced it to economics and mechanism design._

No one is saying that simple mathematics cannot have profound applications to
the real world. One need look no further than Claude Shannon's fundamental
work in information theory for an universally acknowledged example of this
phenomenon.

 _Also the core BTS papers were published in Science and AAAI, so they are
pretty mainstream._

That really doesn't prove anything either. Academia is full of brown-nosing
"I'll cite your paper if you cite mine" types. After all, Prelec claims that
one of his motivations for introducing a "truth serum" is that consensus
opinion can't be trusted, because sometimes the experts have a reason to lie.
Has he ever run his own research through the serum to see what comes out? And
more importantly, would anyone else really care?

 _I hadn 't heard of the deal/fraud you're describing and am curious to learn
more ..._

Don't really have that much more to add except that from what I understand,
Prelec knowingly lent his name (and by extension, MIT's name) to a grant
proposal that deliberately inflated the value of the work product described in
the proposal by an estimated factor of 100 (according to an independent
consulting firm with an extensive track record in performing this type of
forensic accounting for law enforcement agencies).

The interesting question of course is why would Prelec do something this
foolish ___after_ __securing tenure at the MIT Sloan School of Management?

It is true that there is a lot of pressure on academics to raise money to help
support their bloated university administrations, even after receiving tenure.
Perhaps this was part of the reason why Prelec turned his head the other way
as Draper officials "larded" up the proposal with useless busywork merely
designed to maximize the overhead which that organization's top-heavy
administration would be eligible to collect on the same set of deliverables.

It is also possible, however, that Prelec was eager to move beyond the world
of art critics and sexual promiscuity surveys into something with more
prestige by associating his name, for example, with this country's national
intelligence counter-terrorism program ... perhaps motivated in part by
professional narcissism and/or delusions of grandeur.

 _Paper from Science, worth reading ..._

Thanks for sharing the link, but including a list of the most significant
applications of Prelec's theory over the past 15 years would be even better!

~~~
mgraczyk
You should check out his more recent work. Your reply is pretty ironic given
that his focus has been studying the prevalence of "questionable research
practices" and how to detect and avoid them.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22508865/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22508865/)

Here are some interesting papers in that direction at least partly inspired or
building on Prelec's work.

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1958824.1958865](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/1958824.1958865)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002251931...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519311001330)

[https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI12/paper/viewPap...](https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/AAAI/AAAI12/paper/viewPaper/5096)

~~~
selfishgene
The first paper you mention (on measuring the prevalence of questionable
research practices with incentives for truth telling) was especially timely
since 2012 was one year after Drazen's program with Draper Laboratory was
reported to federal prosecutors for misconduct.

By the way, not at all surprised that the paper found such a high rate of
dishonesty in psychological research. After all, Drazen earned his PhD in the
same department at Harvard University where now-disgraced evolutionary
biologist Marc Hauser was forced to resign after admitting to fabricating
data, manipulating experimental results, and publishing falsified findings.

Draper considered hiring Hauser as a consultant on a different problem (which
ironically involved trying to detect lies ... this time by the CIA) not long
before it was reported in the news that his office had been raided by
authorities:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/education/14harvard.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/14/education/14harvard.html)

Draper unfortunately didn't act fast enough, because based on an investigation
into that program, Hauser would have probably fit right in! Ironic too that
Hauser was also the author of a popular best-seller entitled _Moral Minds: The
Nature of Right and Wrong_ :)

At the time of the raid, Hauser was already well known to students on the
Harvard campus on account of his support for this salacious Harvard first:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/13/highereducatio...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/13/highereducation.internationaleducationnews)

------
bobowzki
I'm an anesthesiologist so I frequently inject people with hypnotics and
sedatives.

There's definitely a sweet spot where people will say things they probably
otherwise wouldn't. Much like alcohol I guess but perhaps a bit more potent.

~~~
Pigo
I had a spontaneous pneumothorax a couple times in highschool, so I ended up
having a lung surgery to prevent them when I was 18. To this day my mom
refuses to reveal the things I said to her while I was in recovery, and the
following days when I was on Demerol. It drives me crazy because there is a
lot I could have said, did I mention I was 18? I know she's probably doing me
a favor, but it seems unfair.

I've since wondered if I have a big mouth when I'm dosed because that's who I
really am underneath my impulse control, or if that's how everyone is.

~~~
TallGuyShort
Honestly being partially anesthetized and saying something horrific might be
my biggest fear.

~~~
bobowzki
We are used to it. :-)

~~~
TallGuyShort
Of the people I'm worried about hearing my confessions or fantasies, people
with whom I exclusively have a doctor/patient relationship are the bottom of
the list. It's the early visitors I receive in recovery that scare me :)

~~~
bobowzki
Hehe understood.

------
r_singh
Great Mind Field episode by VSauce where he injects himself with a truth serum
and is still able to lie: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWoPI-
VoFV0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWoPI-VoFV0)

~~~
throwawayhhakdl
Without having watched the link, a serum that prevented you from lying would
be obviously impossible.

Truth serum is about increasing willingness to reveal things that you normally
wouldn’t. More of a blabbermouth serum.

------
snctm
Years ago at university I participated as a subject in a memory study that
involved the injection of scopolamine. I was familiar with it's reputation as
a truth serum and very curious to feel the effect.

But it's utter nonsense. There was little more than an awfully dry mouth and a
short-term memory so impaired I felt stuporous.

In my opinion any euphoriant will elicit more truth telling than scopolamine.

~~~
londons_explore
> short-term memory so impaired I felt stuporous

This in itself is really beneficial as a truth serum. By enquiring multiple
times the victim can't remember their previous answer, so therefore reveals
which parts of their story are true and which are fictitious.

~~~
Psyladine
There we have to distinguish between dishonesty and a lie. A deliberate
construction on the spot might not survive multiple angles, this is the basis
of interrogation rooms after all, anyone will trip themselves up repeating
versions over and over again.

What won't necessarily find the light of day is deception, a pattern of
behavior. A drug dealer might get caught up in where he was or who he was with
at a given time on a given date, but he'd have to be intellectually impaired
to admit he was a professional criminal for a living.

------
wruza
>As with alcohol, the results of hypnosis were never completely trusted;
Sigmund Freud, for example, used the technique to uncover patients’ repressed
memories of sexual abuse but eventually admitted that most of the
recollections were fantasies. “Such widespread perversion against children is
scarcely probable,” he concluded.

Memory can play funny tricks (except in court).

~~~
post_below
This is a side note...

There's no evidence that hypnosis is reliable, true.

But "widespread perversion against children" as we now know, is not just
probable, it's reality.

28% of children according to one study. No one really knows though, since it's
of course one of the most underreported crimes.

[https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-
sexual-a...](https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-
abuse/child-sexual-abuse-statistics)

~~~
adrianN
I'd like to know the exact questions asked to determine whether someone was
sexually abused or not, but I have a hard time finding the studies cited in
your link. As I interpret the text from your link, a teenager voluntarily
sending nudes to their partner would count as sexually abused because they
participated in the creation of child pornography.

~~~
ben_w
Although that _might_ be part of it, I don’t find 28% to be a surprise.

One reason is that I’ve been told the age of consent in many places was 12 as
recently as the Victorian era [0], and why would it be that low if there
wasn’t a _lot_ of people who wanted that? (It might just have been politicians
who wanted that, but I fear that’s merely unjustified optimism).

The other main reason is the number of women who tell me about traumatic
experiences is high enough that it’s plausible _all of them_ have been
(there’s no reason for me to know about everyone’s history, so of course I
believe I know someone who hasn’t told me and never will).

Of course, this percentage does mean that the “think of the children” meme
ought to put all children under 24-7 surveillance so that nobody can ever
touch them. Side effects haven’t slowed that meme down before, why would it
now?

[0] I never cared to check, so I don’t know how many or when any given
jurisdiction changed

~~~
beagle3
> and why would it be that low if there wasn’t a lot of people who wanted
> that?

Not to detract from your other points, which I agree with, but ... according
to e.g. [0], and I've found similar data in other places, life expectancy for
a girl in the victorian era was ~40. So you can't judge the number 12 by
today's standards.

[0] [https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-life-expectancy-like-
duri...](https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-life-expectancy-like-during-
Victorian-England)

~~~
throwawayhhakdl
Life expectancy includes infant and child mortality and thus is commonly
misunderstood. Given that you’re already alive and healthy at age 12, your
personal life expectancy is going to be higher than the population mean.

~~~
buckminster
Yes, the post-childhood life expectancy in Victorian England was 73. For all
the money spent on medicine and public health we've barely moved it.

------
Sevrene
Not quite truth serum, but if you feel more comfortable with someone, you are
more like to be more open to them. If you've watched some police
interrogations you might see that one of the things they try and do is build
rapport with the person they are questioning for this reason.

So decreasing inhibitions so that you don't care about this, or increasing
empathy so that you feel more trust in general can let people be much more
truthful. For instance, alcohol or MDMA, or talking to a close friend compared
to a stranger.

~~~
pdkl95
Even if we ignore the strong ethical, humanitarian, and strategic objections,
using torture as a tool to extract information always seemed like the wrong
tool for the job. Causing someone distress/pain obviously decreases the chance
that they will tell you the information willingly and incentivizes simply
making something up to make the torture stop. Instead, modern successful[1]
methods of interrogation like the Reid technique[2][3] are designed around
incentivizing the desired outcome. Very low (sub-psychadelic) doses of MDMA in
a comfortable "social" or "party" setting might be very effective.

I don't know how true the story is, but I once heard an anecdote about this
method working during WW2. The Allied soldiers took a German POW out for beers
and just chatted with without trying to push any particular subject. Then they
made a boasting claim about how German aircraft couldn't keep up with the
latest American engineering, causing the POW to respond with an excited
objection explaining their new airplane's capabilities (the information they
wanted).

[1] Often dangerously successful - the Reid technique in particular is know
for a very high rate of false positives. "Of the three hundred and eleven
people exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, more than a quarter had
given false confessions"[2]

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique)

[3] The Babylon 5 episode "Intersections in Real Time" (S4E18) is almost
entirely Sheridan being interrogated with the Reid technique.

~~~
ben_w
> Often dangerously successful - the Reid technique in particular is know for
> a very high rate of false positives.

I would argue that makes it _unsuccessful_ — and worse, that it’s a case of
Goodhart's law, optimising for the measure (convictions) rather than the much
harder task of actually finding the guilty people.

------
downerending
Entirely speculation, but governments will soon have (if they don't already)
the ability to extract the answers to yes-no questions from subjects via fMRI
or something similar.

It'll be interesting to see whether this capability moves out into the law
enforcement community.

------
rahuldottech
Also read:

Drunk Talk Is Real Talk: The Science Behind What You Said Last Night:
[https://www.elitedaily.com/life/culture/drunk-talk-real-
talk...](https://www.elitedaily.com/life/culture/drunk-talk-real-talk/704272)

------
droithomme
Based on the anecdotes in the article, spiking cigarettes with marijuana
extract actually had some success in getting some people talking.

------
dehrmann
Interesting that it doesn't mention Kallocain. It's a dystopian novel based on
a truth serum.

------
yters
Plato recommended getting people drunk to find out the truth in Laws.

------
Taniwha
So about as useful as good as polygraphs then

------
_tkzm
who needs expensive and hard to obtain truth serum when all you need is
alcohol...

