Teneille’s second point, about expensive defense tactics and dependents, is such a good one — I’m curious to know what kinds of protections against this sort of thing exist. I can only imagine that the problem is going to get worse and the questions more complicated as technology grows and its uses are explored. Not having studied the legal side of any of this yet, I can’t make a substantive suggestion — all I can say is, we really need to think about it and work on it ASAP.

I also wanted to add to the list of reasons why those who research and develop fMRI-based lie detection technology can’t possibly constitute the relevant community. To my way of thinking, there is still some doubt about whether such a thing is theoretically possible in a form that would be reliable enough for this kind of use, let alone practically possible or happening in any meaningful way now — so limiting the field to those who work on it fully excludes any voices who might think it could never happen, as they wouldn’t be working in that field at all. Not only will the field likely be biased in favor of the technology at hand right now — it categorically excludes a whole category of legitimate neuroscientific voices.

Aside from the evidentiary issues, I have a serious problem (that is not specific to this technology) with custodians using expensive defense tactics such as this against children and dependents. Does the daughter (or the state) have access to similar resources? While a similar argument could be raised for all types of razzle-dazzle evidence in trials, it seems particularly egregious in a child dependency hearing – and raises questions of distributive justice.