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There are reliable ways to tell if someone is lying to you – but they’re rarely the ones we think of using | Kirsty King

We are in dangerous territory as courts encourage jurors to discern untruth from body language. In fact, the words are far more revealing Imagine you are a juror on a murder trial. A married couple have been found shot dead. The defendant, a man known to them, denies the charge. You’ve heard the prosecution’s evidence and you’ve heard his testimony. But you and your fellow jurors are unsure if you should believe his protestations of innocence. At the hotel in the evening, another juror makes a novel suggestion: contact the spirits of the dead couple to find out if the defendant is lying. In agreement, you all sit around a crudely constructed Ouija board and call upon the spirits of the dead couple to ask: “Who killed you?” The board spells out the name of the defendant. The next day, you return a guilty verdict to the court. Sounds too absurd to be true? Well, in 1994 an English jury did

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What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, There are reliable ways to tell if someone is lying to you – but they’re rarely the ones we think of using | Kirsty King, We are in dangerous territory as courts encourage jurors to discern untruth from body language. In fact, the words are far more revealing Imagine you are a juror on a murder trial. A married couple have been found shot dead. The defendant, a man known to them, denies the charge. You’ve heard the prosecution’s evidence and you’ve heard his testimony. But you and your fellow jurors are unsure if you should believe his protestations of innocence. At the hotel in the evening, another juror makes a novel suggestion: contact the spirits of the dead couple to find out if the defendant is lying. In agreement, you all sit around a crudely constructed Ouija board and call upon the spirits of the dead couple to ask: “Who killed you?” The board spells out the name of the defendant. The next day, you return a guilty verdict to the court. Sounds too absurd to be true? Well, in 1994 an English jury did

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Science file for readers following research, health, climate, space, medicine, and scientific institutions. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-08T07:00:03+00:00.

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Primary source: There are reliable ways to tell if someone is lying to you – but they’re rarely the ones we think of using | Kirsty King via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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