From a forthcoming episode of PBS’s NOVA scienceNOW on the science of crime prevention comes an interesting revelation: William Marsten, one of the people behind the invention of the (oft-maligned) lie-detecting polygraph, is the same William Marsten who created Wonder Woman and her truth-producing Golden Lasso:
“Anyone caught in the lasso found it impossible to lie,” writes Manchester Metropolitan University psychologist Geoffrey Bunn in The lie detector, Wonder Woman and liberty: the life and work of William Moulton Marston, “and because Wonder Woman used it to extract confessions and compel obedience, the golden lasso was of course nothing less than a lie detector.”
The NOVA scienceNOW episode on whether science can stop crime airs on October 17. Learn more over at PBS.
