The [b]US’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA)[/b] has spent some $1bn training thousands of ‘behaviour detection officers’ to look for facial expressions and other nonverbal clues that would identify terrorists, writes [s]The New York Times[/s]. But there’s no evidence that these efforts have stopped a single terrorist. The TSA ‘seems to have fallen for a classic form of self-deception: the belief that you can read liars’ minds by watching their bodies… But in scientific experiments, people do a lousy job of spotting liars. Law-enforcement officers and other presumed experts are not consistently better at it, even though they’re more confident in their abilities.’
[link url=http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/25/science/in-airport-screening-body-language-is-faulted-as-behavior-sleuth.html?emc=edit_th_20140325&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=60640071]Full The New York Times report[/link]
[link url=http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/03/21/science/can-you-spot-the-liar.html?gwh=0F6FAA75F289DBA83F2F15171459EFDE&gwt&_r=0]NYT test: Can You Spot The Liar?[/link]