truth serum

truth serum (plural truth serums or truth sera)

1. (informal, medicine) A psychoactive medication, especially one administered by injection, which supposedly renders a person cooperative and disposed to respond honestly to questions.
   • 1948 Sept. 11, "Mrs. Clark Agrees to Return With Lemay for Questioning," Milwaukee Journal, p. 1 (retrieved 16 July 2012):

     There is a difference of opinion among criminologists as the relative merits of the truth serum test over the lie detector test. The former relies upon producing a state of near unconsciousness in the subject by injection of controlled dosages of sodium amytal.

   • 1956 February 13, “Cyprus: Heat & Haggling”, in Time:

     "The British run torture centers in Cyprus where they beat their prisoners, inject them with truth serums, extract their teeth and fingernails," cried Athens' Voice of the Fatherland radio.

   • 1973 November, William Gangi, “Books for Lawyers”, in American Bar Association Journal, volume 59, section “Reliability of Evidence. By Arne Trankell.”, page 1244:

     He does note, however, that other aids such as truth sera and lie detectors will never be entirely successful since persons speak only what they believe to be the truth, and the truth they speak may not square with objective reality. Under these circumstances truth sera and lie detectors are not dependable.

   • 1984 fall, John L. Plotkin, “The Previously Hypnotized Witness: Is His Testimony Admissible?”, in Military Law Review, volume 106, pages 194–195:

     This assumption underlies the repeated comparison of hypnosis to scientific tests designed to measure the truthfulness of the subject, such as polygraphs and truth sera.

   • 2002 April 4, Jodi Wilgoren, “Illinois's Longest-Serving Inmate's New Hope of Freedom”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 July 2012:

     Mr. Heirens spent days in police custody and was given truth serum and a spinal tap before confessing to the Degnan killing and the earlier slayings of two women.

   • 2003, Alison Winter, “The Chemistry of Truth and the Literature of Dystopia”, in Helen Small and Trudi Tate, editors, Literature, Science, Psychoanalysis, 1830–1970: Essays in Honour of Gillian Beer, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 230:

     This did not mean that truth sera could not be used as diagnostic aids in distinguishing between falsehood and truth, but the nature of the evidence changed in psychiatric contexts, and so did the kinds of falsehood it could ferret out.

• truth drug

• lie detector

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