Lie To Me - From the Courtroom to Fox
January 21st, 2009 Posted in Legal VideoLegalsized Inc recommends this interesting article.
From the New York Times
LOS ANGELES — Paul Ekman has been picking out liars for about 40 years. That uncommon skill might have been ripe for a new kind of Fox reality show. Instead it is the basis for the latest Fox crime series. That show, “Lie to Me,” which makes its debut on Wednesday night and stars the well-regarded British actor Tim Roth, has some of the standard elements of a television police procedural.
But what makes the show distinctive — and able to draw what Fox executives reported as high marks from test audiences — is its source in Dr. Ekman’s research.
That work concentrates on the meaning of human facial expressions, body movements and speech patterns, which Dr. Ekman, a psychologist, has researched and cataloged. (He once received an infamous Golden Fleece Award from William Proxmire, the former Democratic senator from Wisconsin who denounced the spending of federal funds on silly experiments. Dr. Ekman won for studying facial expressions of tribesmen in New Guinea. But he said that he had since proved his point: that there is a universality to human reactions, no matter what the culture or language.)
Dr. Ekman has worked with governmental organizations from the F.B.I. to the Transportation Security Administration, teaching how to identify people who are under emotional duress or trying to deceive.
In “Lie to Me” those techniques, often illustrated by real-life examples like Mike Tyson and Bill Clinton (“I’ve been a collector of celebrity liars,” Dr. Ekman said in an interview), form the spine of the investigative work undertaken by Mr. Roth’s character, who is not, Dr. Ekman took pains to emphasize, based directly on him.
For one thing, the character is British. (Mr. Roth has retained his British accent, unlike other British actors, notably Hugh Laurie of “House,” who have Americanized their accents for roles.)
But Dr. Ekman also pointed out that the fictional psychologist does some things that he himself would never do as a professional — like use deception to secure information.
In the show’s premiere Mr. Roth’s character lies to a person being interrogated. “I completely disapprove of this,” Dr. Ekman said, “even though the Supreme Court has cleared it.”
He also said the show’s writers did not always follow his exact analysis of the meaning of movements and expressions. The first episode, for example, makes much of a person’s rubbing his nose, saying it indicates proof of lying.
Not true. “I pointed it out to them, but they liked it so much they didn’t want to take it out,” Dr. Ekman said. One of his duties as a consultant on the series will be to write a column each week for the Fox Web site that will note what in the latest episode is real science and what is, he said, “junk science.”
