Science-Based Interviewing Versus The Burden of Bad Ideas

Christian Cory
3 days ago
12 min read

The real problem in American interviewing and interrogation is not a lack of research on effective practices. In fact, there is a large body of scientific work on information-gathering approaches (as opposed to accusatory, confession-oriented legacy tactics). This research consistently shows that information-gathering approaches are superior to confession-oriented ones in a number of important ways (Meissner et al., 2014). There should not be any confusion about what interviewing paradigm functions better in an investigation (Catlin et al., 2024, Oxburgh, Myklebust, Fallon, & Hartwig, 2023). The issue that plagues the system is the outdated playbook that continues to shape how interviews and interrogations are taught, used, and defended. Despite decades of systematic scientific research to the contrary, many continue to believe that our methods of interviewing and interrogation, which stem from the mid-20^th century, require no revision.

Chief holding interviewin and interrogation curriculum — Sheriffs, Chiefs, and Training Directors are you aware of what is in your interview and interrogation curriculum? Even the "non-coercive" ones?

This challenge exists on a large scale. There are over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, operating across federal, state, and local jurisdictions. There are over 3000 elected sheriffs. Each agency has its own leadership structure, political environment, legal opinions, and training budgets. There is no single authority, not all states are P.O.S.T. (Peace Officer’s Standards & Training) states, there is no national mandate, and there is no realistic top-down mechanism capable of implementing changes in how interviewing and interrogation are conducted. The American system of law enforcement is intentionally decentralized and not monolithic. This allows states, counties, and local jurisdictions to decide how they police and how they are policed.

For decades, interviewing and interrogation practices have been passed down through experience, reputation, and anecdotal storytelling. In the past, many of the accusatory techniques were considered best practices, albeit more by decree than any meaningful metric. Most of these tactics were never measured, never validated, and never challenged. Some worked for some people, sometimes. When they failed, though, there was no notation made, no feedback loop, and no case study mechanism for improving upon these techniques used to communicate with other humans. Success stories survived, partly through well-known psychological mechanisms like confirmation bias (Kassin, Goldstein, & Savitsky, 2003) and belief perseverance (Jelalian & Miller, 1984, Anderson & Lindsay, 1998).

What makes this moment in time different is not that science is new and emerging. Research on interviewing, interrogation, rapport, questioning, and investigative interviewing has been accumulating for decades across laboratory studies, field research, and operational environments. What is new is the increasing, untenable tension between that evidence and what is still being taught today. Outdated ideas continue to appear in training curricula, investigation textbooks, detective promotional exams, and specialty courses. Some training providers, likely seeing the writing on the wall, have even morphed like chameleons, repacking themselves as non-confrontational, evidence-based, science-based, or research-driven. Make no mistake, they employ the same philosophy of confession first and problematic techniques, just in new packaging. They emphasize rapport, of course but for other reasons (we will see below), they still say confessions are the standard, mishandle the disclosure of physical evidence, and avoid talking about what the research actually says about their accusatory tactics.

This article is not an attack on individuals, instructors, leaders, or agencies. I was there too. I was a practitioner of these archaic “best practices.” It was all that was taught. Rather, this is an examination of ideas, specifically, why methods that lack measurement and carry risk continue to persist when the measurements have spoken. It is also a challenge to a familiar guardian of the past defense: “It worked for me.” Experience matters. But experience without measure cannot carry the authority it has long been granted without question, especially in a profession where errors could destroy lives.

The Guardians of the Past

While teaching Science-Based Interviewing (SBI) across jurisdictions, we hear the same thing from students about accusatory methods, “I don’t feel comfortable interviewing this way.” “It feels too rigid.” “It doesn’t feel right.” These comments don’t come from lack of experience or from a reluctance to do policework. They come from law enforcement officers who intuitively know that accusatory interviewing techniques force them to act against good judgment. The old model prioritizes confrontation over curiosity and psychological steam-rolling, the new one strives for precision in gathering statement evidence. The officers’ comments highlight the tension between how they want to conduct police work and the outdated “tools” that they have been taught to use.

In my training travels and investigative work, sometimes just a few counties away, I would encounter similar scenarios. There are law enforcement officers and detectives who are actively searching for better ways to interview, updated trainings, who understand that science-based interviewing brings something different than the old standards. However, they often find themselves pushing against something immovable, an agency head, a training coordinator, or “the way we’ve always done it”. One chief, in no uncertain terms, told me, “I used the [insert legacy method] technique. It was good enough for me. So, it’s good enough for them.” We also hear that SBI is somehow “soft.” Over the last three years of my tenure as an investigations commander, our SBI practitioners (among other accomplishments), increased their fatal and non-fatal shooting clearances. There is nothing soft about better investigative methods. It is about preserving your evidence, drawing out false exculpatory statements, eliminating statement contamination, obtaining more admissions/confessions, and maintaining rapport.

Law enforcement has modernized everything else. Equipment has improved. Vehicles are safer and faster. Computer systems are more powerful and easier to use. Data collection has expanded by leaps and bounds. Uniforms, body armor, forensic tools, and investigative technology have all evolved and become prevalent in nearly every agency. Remember how bad uniformed footwear was? Yet the most important investigative tool law enforcement uses—the way we question, listen, and gather information from people, has remained insulated from modernization.

Studies on science-based interviewing demonstrate, repeatedly, that it is superior for investigations: It produces more reliable information, reduces false confession risk factors, and, yes, even by the outdated standard still used in many places, it elicits confessions despite not actively seeking them. Yet interviewing remains one of the few professional practices where failure is rarely counted, methods are rarely tested, and “common sense” is treated as evidence. When the scientific picture is so clear, the question becomes unavoidable: why is interviewing and interrogation training exempt from updating?

From historical doctrine to modern classrooms: inside accusatory training

I want to highlight for agency heads, command staff, and training coordinators what techniques your people are being exposed to. What follows are excerpts drawn directly from training slides, course materials, and a practitioner description of an interviewing and interrogation curriculum. These include curricula that infer that they are research-based and claim not to be coercive. The following approaches are fundamentally accusatory, designed around a single objective: getting an admission followed by a full confession. They rely heavily on the investigator’s confidence and perceived ability to read deception, often based on hunches (which can lead to confirmation bias), and stress confrontation. Whether taught to law enforcement or the private sector, these methods create psychological stress, presume guilt, and increase resistance.

What follows are examples of interview and interrogation training materials that I have either personally encountered or have had brought to me by other investigators telling me “you have to see this one.” All of these have been used in a class from 2022 forward. Any parenthetical statements are mine.

Interview & Interrogation Training Handout Content

Direct questions
- Good for shock value and to cause stress in the meeting.
- Best with raised clear voice
- Used to increase anxiety
Use rapid-fire questions: Reduces their chances to consciously construct, organize or coach their answers to best serve themselves (this was found in two classes)
- Keeps them off guard and reduces their manipulation of you.
- Creates spontaneous responses while minimizing premeditation and fabrication.

Interview & Interrogation Training Slides on Custodial Interrogations

Focus on guilt or remorse: the more conscious or subconscious guilt they feel, the more anxiety they will manifest under such questioning.
Signs of weakening
- Offers excuses
- Denials lose strength
- Becomes silent
- Drops head
- Crying - When suspect cries, do not allow him to compose himself, move in and put more pressure on.
Intensify your theme
- Use a gesture of sympathy at this point
- Do not let them relieve their stress
- Keep the pressure on them
Interrogation description: Less conversational, accusatory, interviewer dominates conversation, no note taking, structured.
They’ve had a chance to talk and now it is in their best interest to listen.
- Be certain and absolute. Avoid words like probably, might have, believe, etc.
- Move closer.
- Evaluate how suspect reacts to closer proximity
Now and only now ask the stressful questions or emotionally charged questions, to test the assertiveness of the individual
Rapport (this concept is focused on obtaining a confession):
- Will also help you to identify interrogation themes e.g. weaknesses and vulnerabilities
Handling Denials
- Block the denial then immediately re-accuse
- Don't let the re-accusation turn into an argument—take control
- "See the hand!"
(This slide deck discusses false evidence ploys (FEP). The training included one NCIS TV clip; this module had three clips from fictional television shows or movies. It had zero references to articles published in academic or scientific journals).
- Trickery or Suggestive Evidence
  - Confession by co-conspirator
  - Witness identification of person interviewing
  - Videotape record of the incident
  - DNA, fingerprints, GSR
  - Satellite Imagery!!!
  - Remember, NCIS is the most popular show on TV! (reference to the CSI effect)

Interview Curriculum, Minimization, and False Confessions: An Online Exchange

(this also included a discussion that they have never had a false confession; given the low criminal level of the work, there will never be DNA evidence or anything additional to be overturned).

I love using the [specific method]. I use a fictional or third-party scenario to normalize actions the suspected individual has not acknowledged. “It’s all about mind #*ckery.”

Manual on Interview and Interrogation

(this was taught as a clever way to force them to talk more.)

Use of loaded questions that are closed yes-or-no questions that falsely limit a person’s options so that any answer is interpreted as evidence of guilt, forcing them to explain a premise they never agreed to and that you are implying
“intimidation” is recommended through the use of the interviewer’s voice, posture, and expressions to signal annoyance or pressure, attempting to make the other person feel uneasy, worried, or guilty.

Textbook used as reference for a 2026 detective promotional exam

(examples cited were from 1991.)

Adversarial/hostile relationship between interviewer and subject likely
Confessions are difficult to obtain but more valuable to you case if you get one. Difficult to obtain a confession but the value increases (the books notes confessions alone are more valuable than "case facts.")

It would be easy to assume these ideas belonged to the mid-20th century, an earlier era of interrogation practices before modern-day psychological research. They do not. Every example above has been taught after 2022 to law enforcement personnel and/or private-sector investigators and sold as effective and professional practice. Despite research documenting the risks of these techniques, including false confessions, contaminated statements, and false case information, they continue to be promoted as common sense, intuitive, and necessary in the pursuit of “truth.”

The Terrible Two: Plaguing More Than Custodial Suspect Interrogations

If the damage to investigations caused by pseudoscientific lie detection and accusatory interviewing (The Terrible Two) were limited to suspects only, we would still have a serious problem. But it doesn’t stop there. These practices have bled into witness and victim interviews, where they should never be applied. In victim interviews, accusatory tactics are not merely ineffective, they are actively harmful.

During one SBI training, an observing interview and interrogation instructor (not SBI) told one of our SBI instructors, plainly and without hesitation, that he used a particular legacy technique to “prove rape victims were lying.” That sentence alone would cause any room to immediately fall silent. This statement is one of the grossest and most indefensible takes I have ever heard about how some victim interviews are still being conducted and trained.

Coercive interview and interrogation manual. — Interview and interrogation training in the U.S. is still highly coercive and loaded with pseudoscientific practices.

Let me put this into context with some research. Decades of studies show that human lie detection based on observation hovers around 54 percent accuracy (Bond & DePaulo, 2006), basically a coin flip. Presumed lie experts, like law enforcement, do not obtain higher hit rates, but their decision-making is nevertheless different: They are more likely to make lie judgments compared to laypeople, and they are more confident that their decisions are correct (regardless of whether they are wrong or right). It follows from this that the person just mentioned, who is still in the business of teaching law enforcement, was wrong in his assessment of statements nearly half of the time when he was investigating sexual assaults. The notion of using accusatory techniques involving the provocation of stress and subsequent interpretation thereof during victim interviews should strike anyone as not only illogical but also unsavory. The aforementioned instructor who interrogates sexual assault victims is right in line with what accusatory and non-evidence-based curricula still teach:

Evaluate the reliability of the information provided by a victim (this isn’t about the “truth.” This is a false recantation or a false admission of fabrication situation.)
Help you to rule out the truthful person and pinpoint the deceptive one (includes victims)

The curriculum excerpts above are from a self-proclaimed gold standard. It and its many derivatives are coming to your city and state this year. It should come as no surprise that domestic violence advocates and sexual assault advocacy organizations have long criticized law enforcement interviewing practices. They are not reacting to isolated mistakes, they are complaining about ongoing unacceptable practices of applying accusatory interrogation methods and pseudoscientific lie detection to victims. This is where Netflix specials are born. This is not the policing I signed up for, nor is it justice.

Conclusion

Bad interview and interrogation training has consequences. At my former agency, I was allowed to turn away accusatory interviewing classes and those others masquerading as evidence-based or non-coercive. This did not begin with policy changes or training bulletins. It began with academic partnerships that brought together researchers and practitioners around a shared goal: improving how interviews and interrogations are trained, conducted, and evaluated. It began with leadership decisions. It began with officers and detectives having the courage to embrace Science-Based Interviewing and having incredible success with it. As an agency, we stopped spending training dollars on what amounts to poor communication techniques, and we stopped blindly forwarding interview and interrogation training emails that were not evidence-based. All interview and interrogation training had to go through me. These accusatory interview and interrogation trainings are not harmless classes. They are not just more tools in the toolbelt. They shape how investigators, deputies, and officers question, or as in the example above, interrogate victims, in moments that permanently alter lives and reputations. Change often starts quietly. It starts when agency leaders pause and ask more questions.

For agency leaders, training coordinators, and corporate decision-makers who want to take an evidence-based approach or want to seek out more information, resources are available through Project Aletheia. Project Aletheia exists in part to help leaders and elected officials evaluate interview and interrogation curricula, understand what the research actually says, and make informed decisions.

At Project Aletheia we welcome these conversations directly. If you are responsible for approving, reviewing, or funding interview and interrogation training, whether in law enforcement or the private sector, please use us as a resource.

Science-Based Interviewing References

Anderson, C. A., & Lindsay, J. J. (1998). The development, perseverance, and change of naive theories. Social Cognition, 16(1), 8-30.

Bond, C. F., Jr, & DePaulo, B. M. (2006). Accuracy of deception judgments. Personality and Social Psychology Review: An Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social

Psychology, Inc, 10(3), 214–234. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_2

Brandon, S. E., Arthur, J. C., Ray, D. G., Meissner, C. A., Kleinman, S. M., Russano, M. B., & Wells, S. (2019). The high-value detainee interrogation group (HIG). Operational psychology: A new field to support national security and public safety, 263.

Catlin, M., Wilson, D. B., Redlich, A. D., Bettens, T., Meissner, C. A., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. E. (2024). Interview and interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions: A systematic review update and extension. Campbell systematic reviews, 20(4), e1441.

Jelalian, E., & Miller, A. G. (1984). The perseverance of beliefs: Conceptual perspectives and research developments. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 2(1), 25-56.

Meissner, C. A., Redlich, A. D., Michael, S. W., Evans, J. R., Camilletti, C. R., Bhatt, S., & Brandon, S. (2014). Accusatorial and information-gathering interrogation methods and their effects on true and false confessions: A meta-analytic review. Journal of experimental criminology, 10(4), 459-486.

Oxburgh, G.E., Myklebust, T., Fallon, M., & Hartwig, M. (2023). Interviewing and Interrogation: A Review of Research and Practice since World War II. Torkel Opsahl Academic EPublisher: Brussels.

Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., Atkinson, D. J., Brandon, S. E., Wells, S., Kleinman, S. M., Ray, D. G., & Jones, M. S. (2024). Evaluating the effectiveness of a 5-day training on science-based methods of interrogation with U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement investigators. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law: An Official Law Review of the University of Arizona College of Law and the University of Miami School of Law, 30(2), 105–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/law0000422

Russano, M. B., Meissner, C. A., Jones, M. S., Rothweiler, J. N., Taylor, P. J., Cory, C., & Brandon, S. E. (2026). Evaluating the effectiveness of a practitioner‐designed science‐based interviewing and interrogation course: A collaborative training and research effort. Legal and Criminological Psychology, lcrp.70021. https://doi.org/10.1111/lcrp.70021