Herman Cain is innocent of charges that he had affairs, while Jerry Sandusky was not being truthful about his inappropriate involvement with boys, according to two Layered Voice Analysis Technology (LVA) experts.
Lynn Robbins, president of Voice Analysis Technologies LLC of Madison, Wisconsin, and TJ Ward, president and CEO of Atlanta-based Investigative Consultants International, Inc., made the startling claims after analyzing statements made by Cain and Sandusky in recent media interviews using LVA technology created by Israeli-based Nemesysco Ltd.
The company said that LVA is not a voice stress analysis technology but instead uses its own unique patented technology to detect “brain activity traces” in a subject’s voice via a wide spectrum analysis. LVA, Nemesysco said, is comprised of a set of unique signal processing algorithms that identify different types of stress, cognitive processes and emotional reactions. Over 129 vocal parameters are used in order to detect and measure minute, involuntary changes in the speech waveform and create the foundation for identifying the speaker’s emotional profile.
“The science behind LVA is fascinating,” Ward said on his Web site. “A subject’s voice and statements can be analyzed from any recorded voice conversation, such as on the phone, in a TV interview or from a deposition, to determine truthfulness and evasiveness. While a polygraph test is typically administered at the end of an investigation and only with the subject’s cooperation, LVA can be used from the beginning, with or without consent. The LVA technology certainly won’t replace the polygraph, but it can significantly enhance it.”
In an interview, Ward says that he used the $15,000 LVA program in assessing Cain’s statements made to the press regarding Sharon Bialek, who said Cain sexually assaulted her, and Ginger White, his alleged mistress who said she had a 13-year affair with the former presidential hopeful.
“When we ran his speech and everything he talked about not remembering knowing Bialek, he was telling the truth, there was no ‘high risk,’” says Ward. “When I ran hers, she was telling the truth about their meetings, but as far as his hand up her dress, it wasn’t true. It registered as a ‘high risk,’ which means a false statement.”
“With Ginger White, Cain admitted a relationship but she was going beyond what she was saying about a personal relationship,” Ward said.
Ward’s findings were used in a pro-Cain ad by the 999 Fund in a failed bid to clear Cain’s reputation. CNN reported that the group spent just shy of $100,000 to air the ad in Iowa and parts of Minnesota.
On the other hand, Sandusky was not telling the truth about allegedly molesting young boys, according to Robbins, who analyzed his interview with Bob Costas and found that Sandusky made many high risk statements.
The voice analysis of the Sandusky interview was conducted by 11Alive News studios in Atlanta, GA, and in many instances showed that Sandusky made deceptive statements.
“It works off the frequency of the human voice and analyzes a person as they’re speaking,” Robbins told the TV station. “It’s the way the frontal lobe of the brain communicates through the vocal cords and comes out through the mouth and it measures differences, mathematic algorithms are applied to that and it measures the differences.”
“LVA is a technology used as an investigative focus tool,” Robbins says in an interview. “I don’t like saying someone is flat out lying but there was deception.”
“There was barely any emotional attachment in his statements,” Robbins says. He only showed any kind of emotional attachment to his statements, two times, when he said I love to be around kids, and I’m not a pedophile.”
“The majority of his conversation showed embarrassment having to do with people’s perception of him, but not guilt. It’s pretty abnormal for someone to go through this without guilt even if they didn’t do something.”
“He said he worked with many, many young people, but the LVA showed he’s holding something back, he’s afraid of it. He had no stress, no guilt, but indicator showed high excitement. He really believes in his mind that he was trying to make them feel good about themselves. His mouth was saying it but he wasn’t believing it,” says Robbins.
While Robbins says the technology is 95 percent accurate, there are plenty of naysayers.
In a 2007 article in the International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, two Swedish linguists, Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda, were highly critical of LVA.
“Our review of scientific studies will show that these machines perform at chance level when tested for reliability,” the authors wrote. “Given such results and the absence of scientific support for the underlying principles it is justified to view the use of these machines as charlatanry and we argue that there are serious ethical and security reasons to demand that responsible authorities and institutions should not get involved in such practices.”
When asked about the Cain-LVA analysis, Eriksson told USAToday, “As we show in our paper, the principles upon which the LVA is based have no more to do with emotion or deception detection than throwing a pair of dice. So the people investigating Mr. Cain would have obtained equally ‘reliable’ results by doing precisely that.”
However, a 2006 scientific paper from the University of Florida for the Counterintelligence Field Activity that was critical of LVA has since been discredited.
“The work it reports contains a number of serious scientific flaws; as a result, the claims made in the manuscript are not adequately supported by the evidence presented. This work does not merit publication in its current form.”
There are plenty of customers betting on LVA’s accuracy, including 65 U.S. law enforcement agencies, such as the L.A. County Sherriff’s Department, and 12 federal agencies.
The technology is also used by financial governmental bodies, corporate vetting companies, investment houses, contact centers and insurance/banking providers not only in the U.S., but also in Russia and the U.K.
Nemesysco’s enterprise solutions include CRM technologies, fraud prevention, automated risk assessment and pre-employment evaluation systems. Third-party developers can also license the technology to develop anything from medical applications to entertainment products.
