Talk:Statement analysis

Tagged for POV
I'm afraid I don't have time to edit this article myself, but I tagged the "Misconceptions" section for POV. It is not only vague and unsourced, but to say that statement analysis is not interpretation is pure linguistic poppycock. David L Rattigan (talk) 17:15, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Pseudoscience?
I've no idea how do do this but I think this article absolutely should be deleted, it is really terrible. My guess is this is a complete pseudoscience, and maybe a smaller article breifly describing what SA claims to do along with some criticism would be appropriate. Liam1564 (talk) 00:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

This page reads like a paraphrase from Mark McClish's "Statement Analysis" web site. There is no pro or con information provided in the article. Troublingly, McClish's web site only has cases that show people are guilty. Why are there no cases that show people are not guilty? The thing seems a lot like voodoo.

Statement Analysis is a passive investigative technique. In the application of All DOD techniques or technologies, the reality is that some 95% of subjects being 'tested' are innocent, or Not Deceptive. i.e Truthful. But the stories about people 'passing' these tests does not make for good reading. (ie boring) That is why the public generally only get to hear stories about the few (5%) failures.

Statement Analysis is certainly not voodoo. It is far more accurate than polygraph or cvsa. Statement Analysts (examiners) obtain far more confessions than do examiners using only hardware.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, there are no 'cons'. A person is either telling the truth, or they aren't. Ctka 16:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC) Ctka


 * I looked up this Wiki article after discovering McClish's website, which was already mentioned by the Anon poster above. I too wondered if it was just a lot of voodoo. I must say, it is an intriging subject...But, some questions that might improve this Wiki article are:
 * 1) How old is this technique? (his website suggests the 1990s).
 * 2) Does it have the support of any behavioral science fields? (I don't know the exact field it falls under - Psychology maybe?). And are there any independent studies or peer reviews available?
 * 3) How does the wording of a question impact the answer? (ex: do Yes or No questions that result in a flag carry more weight than a more complicated question?). McClish talks about answers, but doesn't address the questions side of these communications...


 * I know a few "nervous" type people that I believe would have a difficult time answering even very direct questions about anything serious, let alone a murder they were never involved in - heck, they get nervous in casual social conversations. They'd be absolute wrecks answering the sort of questions in the examples on McClish's website or this Wiki article. Then there are the camera shy types. I also know wishy-washy people who "talk in circles" all the time; they're constantly saying "well, actually...", "well, you know, really..." - all kinds of filler phrases, backpedalling and grammar errors. It takes them a paragraph to answer Yes or No regardless of the ques (Q: "Is the Pope a Catholic?" A: "Well, basically his family background is..." etc etc). Its just how they learned to communicate. But then again, maybe truly wishy-washy people don't commit the kinds of crimes we're interested in for the purposes of Statement Analysis anyway.
 * Also, if you want to hear re-direction, avoidance and obfuscation, listen to politicians. We hear that stuff on a daily basis and it becomes a cultural habit - sort of like all the legalese that people who know nothing about the law like to use. People use it because they think it sounds sophisticated.


 * I don't think anyone being asked if he/she committed a murder is going to answer with a flat No and just stop. The person will surely want (need) to say more. But they won't have the time to think through their answer. Surely this will lead to some stumbling...In education, there is something known as "the effects of testing" whereby an otherwise good student does poorly on a major exam. They know their stuff, but they clutch when they're tested, especially in a timed environment. In conversation, silence is always deadly - when asked a question, we all feel the heat (pressure) to answer. Is this phenom considered in Statement Anaylsis? If so, how?


 * This is an intriguing topic, and a good one for Wikipedia. But as Anon says, it is incomplete. Does it need a more obvious "Controversies" paragraph, versus the "Misconceptions" para (which, as titled, clearly intends to deflect criticism of Statement Analysis)? Otherwise, echoing Anon, it appears to be a paraphrasing of McClish's website. I must add that that smacks of advertising... And at least a few cases that also show truthfull statements would be helpful, even if they are boring... Engr105th 23:53, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Ok, more info...the Statement Analysis website mentioned above has a Biographical Information tab. This shows a single author (Mark McClish) whose credentials are a BA degree (the lowest undergrad degree awarded in the US) in Physical Education, followed by approx 2 yrs with the Secret Service, and the remainder in the US Marshall Service (a number of yrs as an Instructor)....All good, practical and presumably honorable experience - but not the advanced education one might expect in a scientific topic like this. In fact, nothing in the Bio suggests experience in this specific field at all.
 * There are three external links in the Wiki article. One goes to McClish's site. Another is titled "Scientific Content Analysis" and goes nowhere - the page "has been removed, changed, or is unavailable"....The only other link is to a South African firm, "The Truth Verification Centre SA". It references the US DOD in passing, but is in no way a US gov't site or endorsed as such. This has a lot of verbose info (IMHO) and appears geared to selling a service...Engr105th 01:32, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Quick update. I'm finding several sources for SA, but they seem to be "touting the virtues" as well as offering courses on it (and services). Still don't see anything in the way of critical or scientific reviews. If anyone has sources for that, please post. Thanks. Engr105th (talk) 02:12, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Statement (Veracity) Analysis is not new. It was developed in the early 30's by various criminal psychologists and clinical psychologists. The techniques are peer-reviewed to death. Volumes, nay, Libraries of works iro SVA have been written. Try works by Prof Udo Undeutsch (Koln University)or Prof Aldert Vrij of Plymouth University. Statement Analysis can be taken as subjects for Psych majors at the 2 mentioned uni's (amongst others).

Avinoam Sapir (whom by now probably has PhD's in both psychology and criminology)refined the SVA techniques some 20 years ago. *** —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ctka (talk • contribs) 14:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Believe me, SA seems quite intriguing. But I'm playing the devil's advocate - partly because I'm a bit suspicious of SA, and partly because this Wiki article seems too one sided...Anyway, I looked at the Skeptical Inquirer website, and they have a past article on the topic. http://csicop.org/si/9905. It is the Volume 23, Number 3, May-June edition of the magazine. (I found it by entering "statement analysis" in the search block. It gives an issue that includes Bigfoot as a cover story). I've ordered this backissue since they don't post the whole articles on-line. But they do post a very short subject description, which suggests the "Theoretical and research support for the advertised "scientific" techniques is practically nonexistent" for SA. If this cites legitimate references, as SI often does, that SA is indeed a questionable 'science', then this Wiki article ought to reflect that. Engr105th (talk) 21:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)


 * this so-called "scientific" technique is on a level with the parsing of chicken entrails. takes zero account of individual quirks of language based on one's social background, education, and interests. wikipedia ought to put these pseudosciences into boxes. don't delete them, because people should know about this tripe. but permanently flag them as bunk. ```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.12.127.194 (talk) 21:07, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Merger proposal
This article is covering the same topic as Statement veracity analysis. Both articles are, in my view, poor. Poorly referenced, poorly written, not wikified, etc. But this article looks more wikified. I've stuck a merger proposal on both pages. Petemyers (talk) 00:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I concur. Merge the articles....I have no experience in this however...And it seems to me the original article is the better of the two. Also, I cannot find any reality-based criticism of SA and nothing on how SA might-be-or-has-been used successfully as evidence in Court. Engr105th (talk) 06:08, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

NPOV
I removed most of the article as it was nothing more than an advertisement for a procedure being sold to police departments stating all their claims about how awesome it is and using only its proponents as sources for anything. That violated WP:NPOV policy in a major way. I changed some of the wording and listed two sources that call it pseudoscience. If we could find reliable sources about the topic and present more information in a fair way instead of just reciting everything the people who created it say it can do then we can expand the article again. Based upon looking around some, however, I doubt expansion is likely, as there just isn't too many neutral sources paying any attention to this. DreamGuy (talk) 17:38, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Your edit was most unwelcome. Do not remove 1000 words and all of the sources from an article.  Some of the sources in this article are indeed commercial but others are scholarly articles and respected NPOV sources like the FBI Journal.  If you would like to add a section on criticism/pseudoscience, please do so.  Note that this criticism must also be sourced.76.24.237.160 (talk) 19:17, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Overt product testimonials and extraordinary claims of efficacy need to be easily accessed for verifiability and independence. Invoking "respected sources like the FBI Journal" isn't enough. (Note: I did manage to locate and add in that reference to an article reprinted in the "FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin" but originally published in the journal "Polygraph".)- LuckyLouie (talk) 21:29, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Recent overhaul of the article
Thanks for working on statement analysis. I was the one who originally created the talk page and likened statement analysis to voodoo and criticized that it seemed like a paraphrase of McClish's web site. I don't have a dog in this race and am neither for nor against statement analysis. However, I think the article was in pretty good shape as the result of a bunch of edits various users made from the time I started the talk page and I think you and another user have taken too much out of the article. Over a period of years, those editors added a lot of sourcing and examples and deleted most of the promotional material McClish or one of his boosters added to the article. I agree that more sourcing for the reliability of statement analysis is necessary and that the article should have more anti-statement analysis sources. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Any tool that is widely used in law enforcement and can allow trained investigators to ACCURATELY spot WITHIN SECONDS (for example) that the Jon-Benet ransom note was fraudulent or that Susan Smith knew her kids were dead must have some merit to it. My main concern is that all of the cases presented on both McClish's web site and Sapir's web site show that people are guilty. If statement analysis is only used to gather incriminating evidence and never exculpatory evidence then that is a problem with it. I also question whether that source added recently -- Skeptics -- is a reliable one. There must be something critical written about statement analysis and CBCA in the scientific literature that would be more worthy.18.171.0.233 (talk) 19:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The previous version of the article had a number of problems. It included a section that attempted to "correct misconceptions" about statement analysis, mostly sourced to a primary source, a proponent. Claims need to be sourced to reliable, independent secondary sources per WP:PSTS. Also the lengthy step by step descriptions of statement analysis were verging on WP:NOTAMANUAL, and the material was apparently lifted verbatim from a primary source, which is a WP:COPYVIO copyright violation. We'd need a reliable independent source to address your concern regarding use of the technique to gather incriminating vs. exculpatory evidence. Editors can't editorialize or synthesize their own opinions into articles. Regarding sources in general, I think the Skeptic's Dictionary, Skeptical Inquirer, Leo and Adams sources unquestionably meet WP:RS as independent and reliable. Note that most of the critique comes from Leo, however Skeptic's Dictionary and CSI are generally agreed by consensus to be an appropriate source for this kind of critique as well. If you have specific questions regarding reliable sources, you may want to seek wider opinion at our reliable sources noticeboard. - LuckyLouie (talk) 03:02, 16 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It is false that SA is a pseudoscience. It has been studied, tested, and validated very heavily over time.  Calling it a pseudoscience because Sapir and McClish's websites don't cite sources is not right.  You could say the same thing about medicine if the only thing you had read about medicine was Dr. Benjamin Spock's books.  Spock and Sapir are writing for a popular audience, not a scholarly one.  What follows is a partial bibliography of the scholarly examination of SA.  I don't have time to revise the SA article myself but someone who is willing to do it could certainly be informed by these sources:

Cues to Deception and Ability to Detect Lies as a Function of Police Interview Styles Aldert Vrij, Samantha Mann, Susanne Kristen and Ronald P. Fisher Law and Human Behavior Vol. 31, No. 5 (Oct., 2007), pp. 499-518

Can Criteria-Based Content Analysis Distinguish between True and False Statements of African-American Speakers? Charles L. Ruby, John C. Brigham Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Aug., 1998), pp. 369-388

Child Sexual Abuse Allegations: Reliability of Criteria-Based Content Analysis David A. Anson, Stephen L. Golding, Kevin J. Gully Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jun., 1993), pp. 331-341

The Language of Deceit: An Investigation of the Verbal Clues to Deception in the Interrogation Context Stephen Porter, John C. Yuille Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Aug., 1996), pp. 443-458

Will the Truth Come out? The Effect of Deception, Age, Status, Coaching, and Social Skills on CBCA Scores Aldert Vrij, Lucy Akehurst, Stavroula Soukara, Ray Bull Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Jun., 2002), pp. 261-283

Detecting Deception in Children: An Experimental Study of the Effect of Event Familiarity on CBCA Ratings Iris Blandon-Gitlin, Kathy Pezdek, Martha Rogers, Laura Brodie Law and Human Behavior, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Apr., 2005), pp. 187-197

Huffman,M. L. & Ceci, S. J. (1997). Can Criteria-Based Content Analysis discriminate true and false reports of preschoolers? An exploratory analysis. Unpublished manuscript, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Murray, J. J. (1983). The detection of interviewers; verbal deception from their accompanying overt nonverbal behavior. Unpublished dissertation, Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.

Porter, S ., & Yuille, J. D. (1995). Credibility assessment of criminal suspects through statement analysis. Psychology, Crime and Law, 1, 1-13.

Raskin, D. C., & Esplin, P. W. (1991). Statement validity assessment: Interview procedures and content analysis of children's statements of sexual abuse. Behavioral Assessment, 13, 265-291.

Ruby, C. L., & Brigham, J. C. (1997). The usefulness of the criteria-based content analysis technique in distinguishing between truthful and fabricated allegations:A critical review. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 3, 705-737.

Steller, M. (1989). Recent developments in statement analysis. In J. C. Yuille( Ed.), Credibility assessment (pp. 135-154). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.

Steller,M ., Wellershaus, P, & Wolf,T (1988,J une).E mpirical validationo f criteria-basedco ntenta nalysis. Paperp resenteda t the NATOA dvancedS tudyI nstituteo n CredibilityA ssessment,M aratea,I taly.

Undeutsch,U. (1982). Statementr ealitya nalysis.I n A. Trankell( Ed.), Reconstructingth e past: The role of psychologistsin criminalt rials( pp. 27-56). Stockholm:N orstedta nd Sons.

Yuille, J. C. (1990). Use of criteria-basedco ntenta nalysis.U npublishedp aper, Universityo f BritishC o-lumbia,V ancouver, BritishC olumbia,C anada..

Zapamik,J ., Yuille, J. C., & Taylor,S. (1995). Assessingt he credibilityo f true and false statements. InternationalJo urnalo f Law and Psychiatry,18, 343-352.

Bond, G. D., & Lee, A. Y. (2005). Language of lies in prison: Linguistic classification of prisoners' truthful and deceptive natural language. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19, 313-329.

Colwell, K., Hiscock, C. K., & Menon, A. (2002). Interviewing techniques and the assessment of statement credibility. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16, 287-300.

DePaulo, B. M. (1994). Spotting lies: Can humans learn to do better? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 3, 83-86.

DePaulo, B. M., Charlton, K., Cooper, H., Lindsay, J. L., & Muhlenbruck, L. (1997). The accuracy - confidence correlation in the detection of deception. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 346-357.

DePaulo, B. M., Lindsay, J. L., Malone, B. E., Muhlenbruck, L., Charlton, K., & Cooper, H. (2003). Cues to deception. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 74-118.

Gddert, H. W., Gamer, M., Rill, H. G., & Vossel, G. (2005). Statement validity assessment: Inter-rater reliability of criteria-based content analysis in the mock-crime paradigm. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 10, 225-245.

Gudjonsson, G. H. (2003). The psychology of interrogations and confessions: A handbook. Chichester: Wiley.

Hartwig, M., Granhag, P.A., Strömwall, L.A., & Vrij, A. (2005). Detecting deception via strategic disclosure of evidence. Law and Human Behaviour, 29, 469-484.

Hernandez-Fernaud, E., & Alonso-Quecuty, M. (1997). The cognitive interview and lie detection: A new magni- fying glass for Sherlock Holmes? Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, 55-68.

Horvath, F., Jayne, B., & Buckley, J. (1994). Differentiation of truthful and deceptive criminal suspects in behaviour analysis interviews. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 39, 793-807.

Johnson, M. K., & Raye, C. L. (1981). Reality Monitoring. Psychological Review, 88, 67-85.

Kassin, S. M., & Fong, C. T. (1999). "I'm innocent!": Effects of training on judgments of truth and deception in the interrogation room. Law and Human Behavior, 23, 499-516.

Köhnken, G. (2004). Statement Validity Analysis and the "detection of the truth". In P. A. Granhag & L. A. Strömwall (Eds.), The detection of deception in forensic contexts (pp. 41-63). Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.

Levine, T. R., & McCornack, S. A. (1992). Linking love and lies: A formal test of the McCornack and Parks model of deception detection. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 9, 143-154.

Mann, S., Vrij, A., & Bull, R. (2004). Detecting true lies: Police officers' ability to detect deceit. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, 137-149.

Masip, J., Sporer, S. L., Garrido, E., & Herrero, C. (2005). The detection of deception with the Reality Monitoring approach: A review of the empirical evidence. Psychology, Crime, & Law, 11, 99-122.

Moston, S. J., & Engelberg, T. (1993). Police questioning techniques in tape recorded interviews with criminal suspects. Policing and Society, 6, 61-75.

Newman, M. L., Pennebaker, J. W., Berry, D. S., & Richards, J. N. (2003). Lying words: Predicting deception from linguistic styles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 665-675.

Pennebaker, J. W., Francis, M. E., & Booth, R. J. (2001). Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC): LIWC 2001 manual. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Raskin, D. C., & P. W. Esplin (1991). Statement Validity Assessment: Interview procedures and content analysis of children's statements of sexual abuse. Behavioral Assessment, 13, 265-291.

Sporer, S. L. (1997). The less traveled road to truth: Verbal cues in deception detection in accounts of fabricated and self-experienced events. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 11, 373-397.

Vrij, A. (2005b). Criteria-Based Content Analysis: A qualitative review of the first 37 studies. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 11, 3-41.

Vrij, A., Akehurst, L., Soukara, S., & Bull, R. (2004b). Let me inform you how to tell a convincing story: CBCA and Reality Monitoring scores as a function of age, coaching and deception. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science (special issue on Forensic Psychology), 36, 113-126.

76.24.237.160 (talk) 05:43, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks, anonymous IP. Bombarding the Talk page with a huge bibliography isn't necessary, so I've "hatted" the list for readability. The article makes it clear that SCAN in particular "has been called" pseudoscience and this is based on academic criticism of that particular technique's resistance to falsifiability. Are you familiar with Wikipedia policies and how they apply to controversies? If so, what would you like the article to include? - LuckyLouie (talk) 15:08, 18 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Um, that article you cited says that SA is much more reliable than chance (in the 70s) and that if only recall of falsity needs to be identified, that it is more than 90% accurate. This tilts the scale more in the direction of science than pseudoscience.  Whether SCAN is pseudoscience is irrelevant.  That's like claiming medicine is pseudoscience because the doctor who advertises most aggressively on TV is only a quack.76.24.237.160 (talk) 07:13, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the analogies. Have you read WP:TRUTH or WP:NPOV? If so, you understand we editors don't decide the status of a subject, we use reliable mainstream sources that do it. Again, what would you like the article to say? Perhaps it's the case that techniques such as SCAN that are heavily marketed as "science" have attracted criticism as pseudoscience, but other more generalized techniques have not? If so, we'd need a reliable source that makes this evaluation for us, we can't do it ourselves. - LuckyLouie (talk) 13:12, 19 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I think the made-up example from Sapir should be replaced with an example from a real case.76.24.237.160 (talk) 19:35, 22 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The article ought to be modeled after polygraph. They have a lot in common, both their use as investigative tools and their alleged pseudoscience.  The first part of polygraph starts by stating what it is and then introducing the scientific controversy.  That article has separate sections for things that are dealt with in a line or two of this article.  I will do some work on the article in the next 30 days (oops... 3 is a liar's number!  I mean 28 days).  I will start by putting it in some categories that will attract more attention to it.18.171.0.233 (talk) 00:08, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

This article needs work
This article needs a whole bunch of work. For one thing, statement analysis and statement validity analysis are two different things, and CBCA is something else different. I am going to start by adding a criticism section, which is long overdue from the article. All that is in there right now is a dismissive claim of "pseudoscience" by a magazine. I am going to add some specific criticism by one of the scientists who's studied these types of analysis most.Shamrockshake (talk) 01:57, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Need a page on Avinoam Sapir
I don't know where else to request a page, but I would like to see one on the inventor of Statement Analysis. Is he related to the famous linguist Edward Sapir? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.73.133.22 (talk) 16:26, 3 December 2013 (UTC)