Book Review: The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector

• Author: John J. Furedy
• Date: 01 March 2013
• Published date: 01 March 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567712470135
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

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International Criminal Justice Review 23(1)
have much to say about U.S. involvement in Mexican drug policy, other than to note the points of
contention between the two countries. This neutral approach might be appropriate to journalistic
notions of ‘‘objectivity’’ but it fails to live up to academic standards of critical analysis. In sum,
Grayson and Logan have done some important research on Los Zetas and other Mexican DTOs but
have failed to follow through with a rigorous scholarly analysis of the challenges they present to
policy makers, government officials, law enforcement, and society on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico
border.
Geoffrey C. Bunn
The Truth Machine: A Social History of the Lie Detector. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. viii,
246 pp. $34.95. ISBN-13:978-1-4214-0530-8
Reviewed by: John J. Furedy, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada and Christine Furedy, York University, Toronto
Canada
DOI: 10.1177/1057567712470135
This is a social history in Johns Hopkins’ Studies in the History of Technology series which is a
wide-ranging collection approaching 50 books. This volume traces the history of the development of
the polygraph for the detection of deception up to about 1950, linking the technology to the emer-
gence of criminology and to the depiction of crime in popular culture, with an emphasis on the char-
ismatic personalities who pursued ‘‘criminal man’’ and deception.
The book has chapters that will be of interest to criminologists, anthropologists, and psycholo-
gists but the complete book may not entirely satisfy any of these professionals or even the general
reader. The disappointment stems from the fact that Geoffrey Bunn does not address two important
questions about the polygraph, despite the impression conveyed by the jacket blurb: Does the
machine really reliably detect deception and what are the social consequences of its widespread use
in the United States?
The first four chapters are premised on the argument that a lie detector could not be developed as
long as criminals were thought to be...