Fox is airing a new show called Moment of Truth.  The premise of the show is that contestants are hooked up to a lie detector, and asked personal questions like: Do you really care about starving children in Africa?  Do you like your mother-in-law?  Have you ever cheated on your spouse?

This show makes me want to vomit.  There is no such thing as a lie detector.  Such a device does not exist.  A polygraph detects someone’s level of physiological arousal — heart rate, breathing rate, the amount of sweat coming out of your pores, blood pressure, et cetera.  The machine does not detect lies.  Police use polygraphs (as I understand it) in a crafty way.  They don’t just ask, “Did you kill this person?”  Because that question will make anyone nervous.  Instead, they mention some words, people, and so forth.  Random stuff.  Except in that random stuff, there are bits relevant to the case that only the guilty person would know.

As a very basic example, let’s say that someone was beaten to death with a tire iron.  The only details that were released to the public were that the person was found dead in a ditch.  So during the polygraph test, they might say to the suspect, “Lawn mower… scissors… wrench… tire iron… screwdriver… chainsaw….”  And so forth.  If the suspect’s vitals spike just when they say “tire iron” (when only the killer would know the victim was killed with that), then it’s likely the person knows something about the murder.

But even that isn’t admissible in court.

Yet talk shows like Maury Povich, and countless others, put people through these “lie detector” tests.  People’s lives are ruined over this — spouses innocent of cheating are shown as “lying” because they’re nervous when the question is asked, and their marriage dissolved.  It is pure idiocy, and it makes me sick.

And now, Fox is making an entire show based around this.  Thank you, Fox.  Thank you for lowering the bar.