On Narco-analysis and Brain Mapping

On Narco-analysis and Brain Mapping

Excerpts from Girish Shahane’s Blog Post:

News has just come in that S Malini, the Assistant Director of Bangalore’s Forensic Science Laboratory, has been sacked after it was found that her credentials were forged. I’ve written more than once about how the narco analysis and ‘brain mapping’ pioneered by that facility were voodoo techniques. What’s shocking is how long the media swallowed the idea that these tests were scientific, and how much credibility they were given by the judicial community. This, despite a study by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences showing that ‘brain mapping’ is untrustworthy; and a recent paper published by Nawaz Irani, a researcher at the forensic lab at Kalina in Bombay, which demonstrated that narco analysis is equally useless.

Some day journalists will write about how thousands of suspects were injected with drugs that caused debilitating side effects, and failed to produce any credible information for investigators. Perhaps there will even be demands for compensation filed.

http://girishshahane.blogspot.com/2009/02/narcoanalysis-brain-mapping-and-other.html