I found out via Language Log that the new Fox show "Lie to Me" features Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System as a way of detecting lies. Ekman is serving as the show's scientific adviser and keeping a blog in which he takes short clips from the show and explains how they illustrate his system. (Evidently he had a real creative burst when he wrote a dozen entries at 3am last Wednesday.)

The blog is an effective demonstration of how Ekman's techniques are meant to be used. It also makes the show look a bit silly, because as in much expository dialogue, the characters tell each other things that they should both already know if they are experts.

Last time we checked in with Ekman, I was still bemoaning the paucity of video examples of microexpressions. The examples on the blog help his cause, and the folks at Language Log seem to respect him. But I would still like to know more about how common microexpressions are in the real world, and better tests of whether they can really be seen and used for inference.