ABSTRACT
Intensive collaborations between academics and practitioners have resulted in much progress in nonverbal and verbal lie detection. They resulted in theory-based interview protocols, which obtain 70–75% accuracy in correctly classifying truth-tellers and liars. We briefly introduce several of them but focus on Cognitive Credibility Assessment, because we mainly worked on that approach. We briefly discuss its rationale and underpinning research. We then discuss the transition from research to practice and discuss four challenges we encountered in our efforts to teach practitioners verbal lie detection: 1) lack of availability amongst academics to deliver training, 2) speaking the right language during the training, 3) not enough time for practitioners to practice what they have learned in training and 4) explaining to practitioners how they can use the taught material in their interview work. In the next section about the impact of research, we highlight the importance of designing training based on theory and evidence, which is rare in lie detection training. In the final section we emphasise the importance of academic–practitioner collaborations and discuss the role of each in the research process.
