Here come the big fat liars

Though ABC’s Ugly Betty is a rip-off of a telenovela from Colombia, and though the coffee and cocaine country inspired a subplot on Entourage, most of the US TV network minds have been stealing their reality TV ideas from Europe.

But the newest copycat show on the fastest track here, in Brazil, France and the UK is a copy of a series that’s the biggest show from Bogota to the borders: a lie detector show.

Fox is working up a pilot for Nothing but the Truth in which participants are faced with very personal, and increasingly uncomfortable and invasive questions. If they answer 21 truthfully, they win $50,000.

If the contestant lies (proven by a second polygraph they took earlier backstage), he or she is busted in front of a studio audience filled with family and friends.
The Fox show should air in the next few months.

The use of lie detector tests has become increasingly hot around the world. Even though a study four years ago by the US National Academy of Sciences found that the tests provide to many false results to be reliable.

The truth-be-told boom is surpassed only by the controversy over the polygraph tests, which use a blood pressure cuff and electrodes to measure changes in a person’s stress level when asked sensitive questions.

An exhaustive 2003 study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences concluded that the tests have too many false results to be relied upon as job screening tools.