Steam Powered Machine Guns and Lie Detectors | MythBusters | Season 5 Episode 24 | Full Episode

Youll never really have to worry about beating a lie detector test, theyre inadmissible in court

Adam keeps playing gleefully with balls and what's basically a simple metal tube, nothing more. Jamie: "Yeah, I know it's fun, let me get back to work." That's probably the most succinct characterization of the two possible..

17:20 "YEA STOP TALKING WHAT IS THE PSI"

Kari's face after the second test......she was actually angry :)

4:20 I'd pay to hear their hourlong brainstorm uncut.

When they talk about the studies on the polygraph. They fail to mention that the lower figure would mean two out of ten being wrongly convicted if they used this in court. Why are the figures not more consistent if it's so good?

This is one of my fave eps. The steam machine guns is one of the coolest builds the show had

How do they know the polygraph hasn't been beaten? Surely the whole point of defeating a lie detector is to not get detected beating the detector.

I guess they had to give the cops a propaganda freebie on the lie detector stuff so that they can keep using their bomb squad

That lie detector test could have easily failed, if they just went with the mindset that they didn't actually steal anything, but borrowed it for the episode.

It always disgusts me how the polygraph people lie about the accuracy & efficacy of their stupid pseudoscience machine, and about the related scientific research. The fact of the matter is they need people to believe it works, in order for it to have the intimidating effect that the operators rely on. The process needs to intimidate people in order to put the subject under stress in order to break their composure and force mistakes and inconsistencies in their answers. A "lie detector test" is less about the stupid machine, and more about the interrogation techniques of the operator. In theory, you might think, if someone is telling the truth they shouldn't feel the stress, right? Wrong! The "false positive" rate of a polygraph "test" is estimated to be about 50%. That is, assuming you're being truthful, there's still a 1-in-2 chance that the operator will conclude that you are lying. For most honest people, simply being falsely accused of something is incredibly stressful, and polygraph tests are not designed to be reassuring in any way. Polygraph tests have been an integral part of innumerable false convictions and forced false confessions. If you are someone who cares more about justice than about securing a conviction (ie, you're a normal person, and not a police detective), I believe the more you look into this ridiculous tool of injustice, the stronger your moral conviction against it should be.

Shilling for the bogus interrogation technique. The lie detector is a sham.

RIP Grant

"that sounds like a maschinegun" and I expected an AFT guy appear out of thin air and shoot a dog.

They could increase muzzle velocity on the cannon Longer barrels. Lubricating the rounds I believe that with tweaking the design could make it lethal

I just realised that Adam sounds like Herr Flick from Allo Allo at 19:30 🤣

47:02 Jamie riding a Conversion Ebike in 2007.

Wait I thought polygraph questions should be only yes or no questions? Why is there math?

Part of me wonders if the steam machinegun wasn't fully intended to kill, but was meant to be more of an intimidation factor? I mean, you didn't exactly want to charge a musket line to begin with, even with how innaccurate they could be at range. Would you, as a civil war soldier, want to charge toward a line with a couple of these strange machines hissing and bellowing steam; that suddenly start hurling shot at you in rapid succession? Even if the rounds couldn't penetrate like in the MB tests here.. considering it still broke bone? you hit someone in the chest, head, throat? and they're still going down with internal trauma, concussion ext depending where it hit em. Given the time period, weapons n such of the day and what was going on; I think it'd still have been effective in certain areas of combat, even if only as a deterant.

Shirtless Jamie awakened something in me...