'Brain Fingerprinting' to solve crimes? Forgive our skepticism, but we don't think so. And even if it did, the privacy invasion into one's thoughts is hardly worth it.

A technique called "brain fingerprinting," which seeks to probe whether a suspect has specific knowledge of a crime, could become a powerful weapon in national security, its inventor believes.

Lawrence Farwell, a Harvard-educated neuroscientist who founded Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories Inc. 12 years ago and runs the company from a small town in southern Iowa, believes the technique could emerge as the next big thing in law enforcement and intelligence.

"From a scientific perspective, we can definitively say that brain fingerprinting could have substantial benefits in identifying terrorists or in exonerating people accused of being terrorists," Farwell said.

But first the controversial technique, which has had some success, must overcome the skepticism of some experts who are reluctant to embrace it."

Let's hope this one bites the dust quickly.

"It's pure snake oil. There's no evidence you can determine evil intent or anything else from brain fingerprinting. It's the 21st century version of the lie detector test, which also doesn't work very well," said Barry Steinhardt, who directs a technology program for the American Civil Liberties Union. A General Accounting Office report in 2001 found that CIA, FBI, Department of Defense and Secret Service officials did not at this stage foresee using brain fingerprinting because of the expertise needed to employ the technique and because it would likely be of limited usefulness....Independent scientists contacted by the GAO investigators raised various objections to brain fingerprinting and said it needed more work into issues such as how memory was affected by drugs and alcohol, mental illness and extreme anxiety during crime situations.

Limited usefulness? How about limited reliability? How about not being able to pass the Daubert criteria for admission into evidence in court (although, one Iowa court apparently admitted it in a murder case)? Then there's this:

Still, William Iacono, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, said he was confident that brain fingerprinting would eventually establish itself for many applications, including the investigation of carefully planned premeditated crimes.

Frightening stuff for use in crime-solving. At least, "just like lie detector tests, the technique requires the cooperation of the subject. A suspect could simply refuse to cooperate by closing his eyes and refusing to watch the prompts flashed on the screen before him."

Farrell says the technique may have use in Alzheimer's research. He wants to explore it's ability to detect and monitor the onset of the disease. That we would endorse.