Nemesysco Press Release
16
th
March, 2009
“
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds
”
–
Albert Einstein.
We wish to clarify our position with regard to the so-called 'scientific research' writ-ten by Professors Lacerda and Eriksson and published in the International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law in December 2007, but later withdrawn.Our response is divided into five sections:
I: The Real Story
‘
S
cientific research’ does
not
mean
carte blanche
to write whatever one pleases.The article accuses Nemesysco's founder and CEO Amir Liberman of charlatanry, i.e.,of knowingly and deceitfully inducing his customers to use a technology he himself
knows doesn’t work. While we gladly comment below about the technology and d
e-fend its scientific basis and accuracy, we firmly believe that it is perfectly legitimatefor us to take reasonable legal steps to defend both our company's and Liberman'sintegrity and reputation from these unfounded malicious attacks
–
a reputation be-
ing one’s
essential asset in the marketplace. Indeed, Liberman was personallyquoted in the respected US magazine
Science
as saying: ‘
[t]he objection was not in the publication of their study results, it was in their calling us charlatans
’
1
; this was thesole reason for our demand that the article be withdrawn, but there should be nodoubt that we also strongly contest the article's 'findings'.It could be said that the article
–
which Lacerda refers to as being "
provocatively written
"
2
(an understatement, no doubt), intending to show how "
the technology be-hind the lie detector is a scam
"
3
–
indeed touched a raw nerve, but we accept theslings and arrows of a free market and free speech; what we do not accept is the
ad hominem
attacks and unfounded accusations
–
as one blogger put it, "
…
you can see
why they took offence. The paper is unusually lively for an academic article. … in parts
the thing reads more like a blog post or an op-ed than a scientific paper
"
4
, anothercommented, "
the researchers shouldn't be throwing around words like 'charlatanry' unless they're ready to prove that Nemesysco is purposely promoting technology that
[it doesn’t itself] believe to be
effective
"
5
and a third opined, "
[t]he article is quite un-usual for a scientific article. For example, it has a section titled 'Who is Mr. Liberman?'
addressing a private person and claiming that he is a charlatan based on a visit by a friend made to a private company
"
6
.However, we should be clear that insofar as the article features a review of a half-century of lie detection as well as an analysis of voice stress analysis technology
(VSA and CVSA) that has nothing in common with Nemesysco’s LVA technology, we
have no claim or dispute with it.
II: Nemesysco, the Scientific Community and Our Patents:
Firstly, and most importantly, we welcome and encourage proper scientific reviewof, or research about our technology's capabilities; however, as in any type of scien-tific research, some basic criteria must be adhered to and a fundamental under-standing of the research material must be established. Over the past years we haveeither ourselves conducted, or have assisted researchers in the US, Russia, Poland,Japan, South Africa, Sweden and Israel in doing so, mostly providing our technologyand relevant training free of charge to genuine researchers to this end. Further re-search is currently being undertaken in Japan, Israel, Argentina and the US.The article's claims that our technology does not work and cannot work are basedon assumptions made by Eriksson and Lacerda, selectively (as explained below) cit-ing from only three published US research studies, while completely ignoring all theother studies that have been published in diverse scientific publications, or pre-sented at conferences, many of which are available for review on our web site.Contrary to the claimed lack of academic support for our technology, a growingnumber of academic works have focused on
Nemesysco’s
core technology andproducts
7
and found in their favour. The most recent one, a 457-page Polish-
http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2009/01/legal_threat_for_cri.html,comment by Joseph Lehmann
7
E.g.:
“
Forensic Criminology and Psychophysiology: Truth Verification tools, with a special study of Trus-ter Pro
” , Drs. Guy van Damme , Crime
Research in South Africa (CRISA), Volume 2, Number 2(April 2001)
“
Reliability and Validity of Layered Voice Analysis technology in the detection of mental stress
”,
Nemoto K, Tachikawa H, Takao T, Sato H, Ashizawa Y, Endo G, Tanaka K, Ishii R, Ishii N, Hashimo-to K, Iguchi T, Hada S, Hori M and Asada T (presented at the WORLD CONFERENCE OF STRESS,August 2007, Budapest, Hungary and published at Seishin Igaku (Clinical Psychiatry) Magazine,October 2008, ISSN: 0488-1281, ISBN: 05627)
“
The Power of Voice: Managerial Affective States and Future Firm Performance
William J. Mayewand Mohan Venkatachalam, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, July 21, 2008 (Availableat SSRN:http://ssrn.com/abstract=1171102).
“
Robotic KANSEI Communication System Based on Emotional Synchronization
”, Hashimoto, Min
o-ru (Shinshu University), Yamano, Misaki (Shinshu University), Usui, Tatsuya (Shinshu Universi-ty), 2008 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Sept, 22-26,2008, Acropolis Convention Center, Nice, France
“
The sexual arousal factor in pedophiles
”, Prof Herman Conradie, Departme
nt of Criminology,University of South Africa, Codicillus, Volume 48, Issue 1, 2007
language doctorate written by a Warsaw University student, which was publishedonly few months ago
8
, actually covered, unlike Eriksson and Lacerda, many methods
of ‘lie
-
detection’ available today
. The author actually conducted experiments on dif-ferent versions of the LVA technology, and found that there is a strong and consis-tent correlation between LVA's emotional parameters and the expected emotionalstate of those who display what he describes as a 'lack of honesty'.Perhaps the most outrageous fact is that Eriksson and Lacerda decided to ignore onespecific piece of research of which Eriksson at least is certainly well aware. In Swe-den itself, as yet unpublished research conducted in the psychology department of Umea University (2004-2005) on the then-latest version of the technology (onwhich those conducting the research had received proper training), yielded excel-lent results, and as repeatedly reported in the Swedish press, Eriksson is well awareof this research and its findings. To the best of our knowledge, this research has not been published to date mainly due to Eriksson's highly aggressive attack on theUmea research team, e.g. his calling the lead research professor "an unscrupulousjoker" or "an unscrupulous rascal"
9
.One
can’t
help but wonder if Eriksson's passionate defense of academic freedom re-lates only to negative findings.In contrast to all the positive pieces of research mentioned above, in preparing theirarticle, Eriksson and Lacerda never made any contact with Nemesysco
10
. Ratherthan seeking access to the actual up-to-date technology, they instead attempted tosomehow
‘re
-
construct’ the technology from
only one of our two published patents,filed over 10 years ago, which they should have realized, as intelligent and goodfaith researchers, was unlikely to produce a fair reflection of the technology, andparticularly the technology in its 2007 state.To be clear: Nemesysco is not an 'academic institute', nor a research institution. Ra-ther, Nemesysco is a privately funded commercial company with natural profit-making aims, dedicated toward the aim of producing better and more accuratetechnology for voice analysis as well as tools for fighting crime and wrongdoing. Asone of the researchers in the first official research by US Air Force Rome Labs(commissioned by the NIJ) stated,
following a year’s field trial: “
I believe in this sys-
tem’s capability of becoming a valuable investigative tool for the law enforcement o
f- ficers on the streets of our cities, town and villages across the nation
”
11
.
8
Not yet available in English.
9
Free translation from Swedish, found at http://www.vof.se/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=66.
10
Not, as some have suggested, to seek Nemesysco's 'approval' for their research, which in any event it is not (nor should it be) in our power to give or withhold, but rather in order to get access to thelatest technology.
11
Page 17, “Investigation and Evaluation of Voice Stress Analysis Technology”, AFRL, March 20,
2002.
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Nemesysco Press Release - Response to Lacerda and Eriksson, March 16, 2009
Press release from Nemesysco containing a response to the paper "Charlatanry in Forensic Speech Science: A Problem to be Taken Seriously" (2007) by Francisco Lacerda and Anders Erikkson.
I was sent this by Nemesysco.
Nemesysco Press Release - Response to Lacerda and Eriksson, March 16, 2009.pdf
I was sent this by Nemesysco.
Nemesysco Press Release - Response to Lacerda and Eriksson, March 16, 2009.pdf
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