Meet the Experts

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Ken Alder

Ken Alder was born under the sign of Sputnik, and has devoted his career to the study of the history of science in its social and political context. He was conceived at Bell Labs in Murray Hills, New Jersey in the same year that the U.S. launched the nation's first telecommunications satellite. Raised in Berkeley, California, he was part of a bussing program to achieve racial integration, an experience which served as the subject of his first novel, The White Bus, published by St. Martin's Press in 1987. Alder studied physics at Harvard University, where he also received a Ph.D. in the history of science in 1991.

His most recent book of history, The Lie Detectors: The History of an American Obsession, was published by the Free Press of New York in March 2007. The book uses the history of the American polygraph to examine the relationship between science and justice in the twentieth century.

Alder's previous book, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error that Transformed the World, was published by The Free Press of New York in October 2002 and by Little, Brown of London in September 2002. It has won the Davis Prize of the History of Science Society and the Dingle Prize of the British Society for the History of Science, both for the best book in the field of the history of science directed toward a general audience. It was also co-winner of the Kagan Prize from The Historical Society for the best book in European history published in 2002-03. The Measure of All Things has also been translated in a dozen additional languages.

Alder's first book of history, Engineering the Revolution, examined the relationship between the French Revolution, science, and military technology. It was published by Princeton University Press in 1997, and won the 1998 Dexter Prize for the best book published in the field of the history of technology.

Since 1991, he has taught at Northwestern University, where he is Professor of History, Milton H. Wilson Professor in the Humanities, and directs the Science in Human Culture Program. He has held research grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Bar Foundation, and the American Philosophical Society. His current project examines the history of the forensic sciences in France and America from the seventeenth century to the present.

Alder lives with his wife and daughter in Evanston, Illinois.

Bella M. DePaulo

Bella M. DePaulo is a Visiting Professor in Social Psychology. For more than 20 years, she has studied the communication of deception. More recently, she has also been studying the social psychology of singles and is the author of Singled Out. Bella DePaulo received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1979. She is the author of more than 100 publications, and her work has been funded by NSF, NIMH, and the National Academy of Education. She is currently the Chair of the Board of Academic Advisors of the American Association for Single People and was previously the Chair of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.

Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman, researcher and author

Paul Ekman was an undergraduate at the University of Chicago and New York University. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Adelphi University (1958), after a one year internship at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute. After two years as a Clinical Psychology Officer in the U.S. Army, he returned to Langley Porter, University of California Medical School, S.F.where he worked from 1960 to 2004. His research on facial expression and body movement began in 1954, as the subject of his Master's thesis in 1955 and his first publication in 1957. In his early work, his approach to nonverbal behavior showed his training in personality. Over the next decade, a social psychological and cross-cultural emphasis characterized his work, with a growing interest in an evolutionary and semiotic frame of reference. In addition to his basic research on emotion and its expression, he has, for the last forty years, also been studying deceit.

Currently, he is the president of the Paul Ekman Group, LLC (PEG), a small company that produces training devices relevant to emotional skills, offers trainging workshops and is initiating new research relevant to national security and law enforcement.

In 1971, he received a Research Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health; that Award has been renewed in 1976, 1981, 1987, 1991, and 1997. His research was supported by fellowships, grants and awards from the National Institute of Mental Health for over forty years. He has received honorary degrees from the Univerity of Chicago and University of Geneva.

Articles reporting on Dr. Ekman's work have appeared in Time Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Psychology Today, The New Yorker and others, both American and foreign. Numerous articles about his work have also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other national newspapers.

He has appeared on 48 Hours, Dateline, Good Morning America, 20/20, Larry King, Oprah, Johnny Carson and many other TV programs. He has also been featured on various public television programs such as News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and Bill Moyers' The Truth About Lying. Ekman is also the scientific advisor on the Fox TV show - Lie to Me - based on his research.

Ekman is co-author of Emotion in the Human Face (1971), Unmasking the Face (1975), Facial Action Coding System (1978), editor of Darwin and Facial Expression (1973), co-editor of Handbook of Methods in Nonverbal Behavior Research (1982), Approaches to Emotion (1984), The Nature of Emotion (1994), What the Face Reveals (1997), and author of Face of Man (1980), Telling Lies (1985, paperback, 1986, second edition, 1992, third edition, 2001, a new edition is soon to be released which includes a new chapter), Why Kids Lie (1989, paperback 1991), and Emotions Revealed, (2003). His most recent book Emotions Revealed (2008) was co-authored with the Dalai Lama. Ekman has published more than 100 articles.

Jeffrey T. Hancock

Jeff Hancock, research at Cornell University

Jeffrey Hancock is an Associate Professor of Communication and Information Science at Cornell University whose first interest in deception started when he was working for the Canadian government as a customs officer. His research has focused on social interactions mediated by communication technology, with a particular emphasis on how people produce and understand language. In general, his theoretical approach draws on collaborative action-oriented models of communication, in particular Herb Clark's model of language use, and self-presentational frameworks that describe interpersonal motivations. His research has focused on two types of language phenomenon, verbal irony and deception, and on a number of cognitive and social psychological factors affected by online communication, such as impression formation and management, group processes, and self-concept.

David Livingstone Smith

David Livingstone Smith is associate professor of philosophy the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine. He earned his M.A. from Antioch University and his Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of London, Kings College, where he worked on topics in the philosophy of mind and psychology. David's books include Freud's Philosophy of the Unconscious (Kluwer, 1999), Approaching Psychoanalysis: An Introductory Course (Karnac, 1999), Psychoanalysis in Focus (Sage, 2002), Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind (St. Martins Press, 2004) and The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War (St. Martins Press,2007). David's work has been widely featured in national and international media.

His current research interests include deception and self-deception, the sources of war in human nature, and the psychological roots of our tendency to treat others as less than human. He lives in Portland, Maine.

Maureen O'Sullivan

Maureen O'Sullivan is a professor of psychology at the University of San Francisco. She has studied how people understand the thoughts and feelings of others for more than 30 years. More recently, she has investigated a group of 50 "truth wizards" - rare individuals (fewer than one in a thousand) who are highly accurate in understanding others, particularly whether they are lying or telling the truth. In addition to her research on social-emotional intelligence, lie detection and facial expression recognition, O'Sullivan has studied cross-cultural differences in romantic love. She has consulted on lie detection training courses with many national and international law enforcement groups such as the FBI, CIA, TSA and Scotland Yard.

Steve Porter

Stephen Porter, forensic psychologist

Dr. Steve Porter is a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia - Okanagan, working as an educator, researcher, and consultant in the area of psychology and law. He has published numerous research and theoretical articles on forensic issues ranging from credibility assessment, deception detection, psychopathy, violent crime, and memory for trauma/crime. His most recent research activities have focused on detecting lies via facial expressions, non-verbal cues, and statement analysis, including analyses of videotaped public pleas from relatives of missing family members (some of whom are deceptive perpetrators).

Prior to his appointment at UBCO, Dr. Porter spent a decade as psychology professor at Dalhousie University where he created and directed the forensic psychology program. Prior to his appointment at Dalhousie, he received a B.Sc. from Acadia University and a doctorate in forensic psychology (1998) from UBC-Vancouver. During his training, he worked at a medium security federal prison, the Forensic Psychiatric Institute of British Columbia, a parole board, and a victim services organization.

As a registered forensic psychologist, Dr. Porter has conducted nearly two hundred assessments on offenders or accused persons, and been consulted in numerous other cases, often concerning recovered memory evidence and the credibility of child abuse accusations. He has been consulted by police in detecting deception and strategic interviewing in murder and other serious crime investigations.

Dr. Porter has been qualified as an expert witness in several legal cases in Canada. In addition, he has provided training to various professional groups, including parole officers, private investigators, police, psychologists, psychiatrists, workers' compensation boards, Human Rights tribunals, the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and numerous groups of Canadian judges and other adjudicators.

In 2000, Dr. Porter was presented with the President's New Investigator Award from the Canadian Psychological Association. Recent awards include research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2008-2010) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (2004-2009). He is a co-author of the text Forensic Psychology: A Canadian Perspective (Thomson Nelson, 2005). His research has been profiled in national and international media outlets, including CBC's Quirks and Quarks, CBC's As it Happens, CBC's The Current, CTV News, Canada AM, New York Times, Washington Post, ABC News, Self Magazine, etc.