May 23, 2005
An Iraqi Police Officer’s Death, a Soldier’s Varying Accounts
By MONICA DAVEY

The American soldier and the Iraqi police officer were on patrol together outside a flea market south of Baghdad, chatting from time to time, when one of them suddenly started shooting.

What prompted the gunfire is a matter of dispute, but one thing is not: The soldier, Cpl. Dustin M. Berg, fired three times at his Iraqi partner, Hussein Kamel Hadi Dawood al-Zubeidi, and killed him. As Corporal Berg ran away, he picked up Mr. Zubeidi’s AK-47 and shot himself in the side.

In the days that followed, Corporal Berg lied about what happened, saying Mr. Zubeidi was the one who had shot him. And for months he went right on lying, after he recovered from his wound, after he left Iraq, even after he received a Purple Heart he did not deserve with his parents watching at a solemn ceremony back home in Indiana.

Corporal Berg has long acknowledged that he killed Mr. Zubeidi in a rush of moments that day in November 2003, but says he did so only after the officer abruptly raised his gun in a threatening way. Everything Corporal Berg now admits doing wrong after that – shooting himself and lying about the events – grew out of fear for what would happen to him, he says, and the knowledge that other soldiers in his unit had already been investigated for incidents in Iraq.

“I just didn’t think anyone was going to believe me,” Corporal Berg wrote in his most recent sworn statement, “and I didn’t want to get into trouble for something I thought was the right thing to do.”

Corporal Berg, a 22-year-old member of the Indiana National Guard, has been charged with murder and is scheduled for another military hearing on Monday. He is one of a handful of soldiers and marines who have been accused in connection with the deaths of Iraqis and who say they were acting in self-defense.

Unlike the prisoner abuses that have alarmed and riveted the public, these lesser-known cases have created divisions over the definition of murder in a fluid war zone. In Iraq, these stories have caused bitter resentment and distrust of the troops. Among Americans, they have strained units, leaving some Army supervisors saying troops seem reluctant to carry out their duties, and have led to an outpouring of anger in hometowns across the United States.

“These guys go out and do what their country asks them to do, and now they’re being told they did it wrong?” said Rich Hendrix, a Vietnam-era veteran who spent a recent afternoon inside the American Legion Hall in Ferdinand, Corporal Berg’s hometown of 2,300 in Southern Indiana, where residents overwhelmingly say they support him. “I say they’re doing the best they can. You can’t even be sure who’s your friend and who’s your enemy over there, so what are they supposed to do?”

Since the war in Iraq began more than two years ago, more than 20 American soldiers and marines have been accused of crimes in connection with the deaths of Iraqis, including the small number of cases in which service members have claimed self-defense. Navy personnel are also being investigated in the deaths of two detainees, though no charges have been filed. At least 10 service members have been convicted, but in most cases on less serious charges than those they originally faced.

No two wars are alike, making it impossible to compare these cases with those of past conflicts, and some people with military experience disagree over whether anything is different in the Iraq prosecutions.

‘The Same Arguments’

In Vietnam, after a much longer involvement, 95 American soldiers and 27 marines were convicted of killing noncombatants. Gary D. Solis, who teaches law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, said many of those cases are similar to descriptions of killings in Iraq now being prosecuted.

“Look, there are guys who go out and for whatever reason murder defenseless people,” Mr. Solis said. “They’re crimes. And we’re hearing the same arguments now that we heard then: that in the fog of war, you have to make instantaneous decisions. We heard exactly the same thing back then.”

In some of the 20 cases, prosecutors allege that flagrant acts led to death. One soldier was convicted of murder in the death of a 17-year-old Iraqi whom he allegedly had sex with in a guard tower. Four others are accused of suffocating a detainee in a sleeping bag during an interrogation. Another was accused of shooting an unarmed Iraqi as he ran from a truck and, some witnesses said, waved a white cloth.

In other cases, service members have admitted their roles in the deaths, but have claimed that their actions were akin to “mercy killings,” striking final blows to wounded Iraqis who were suffering.

Difficult Cases

But perhaps the most contentious cases are those of the handful of service members like Corporal Berg, who claim that they acted only to protect themselves from what they considered threats to their lives, as allowed by military rules. Some witnesses, however, say they saw something else entirely.

A marine from New York says he shot and killed two Iraqis he had just captured in a house raid because they made a hostile move in his direction; but why, then, did he empty his weapon, reload and shoot some more? A private from Louisiana said an Iraqi cowherd lunged toward another soldier in a field, so he shot and killed him; but the unarmed cowherd was in handcuffs, a fact, the soldier insisted, that he did not notice at first.

Jack B. Zimmermann, a Texas lawyer who has defended service members in similar cases and who also was a prosecutor and criminal judge in the Marine Corps, said he considers these cases “the closer questions – the troublesome ones.”

And some military lawyers say they believe that those cases are being investigated more often in this war. Perhaps, they say, round-the-clock news media coverage of the fighting in Iraq has also meant increased scrutiny. Perhaps such cases are simply more likely to arise in a war complicated by urban combat and the fear of suicide bombers, hidden explosives and an uncertain enemy.

“In earlier wars, I don’t think some of these homicide cases would be prosecuted at all,” said Guy L. Womack, a Houston lawyer and retired Marine lieutenant colonel who prosecuted marines and has represented the Army reservist accused of being the ringleader of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. “We’re second-guessing things we don’t need to second-guess.”

In Iraq, criminal investigations like the one into Corporal Berg’s shooting left a strange mark on other soldiers, acknowledged Capt. Rodney J. Shambarger, one of Corporal Berg’s supervisors.

Some of the soldiers told Captain Shambarger that they felt “less apt” to fire their weapons for fear of being investigated themselves, according to a summary of the captain’s sworn testimony at a hearing in Corporal Berg’s case. On a few occasions, he said, the soldiers seemed to stop following the military rules of engagement. In one incident, a soldier watched as a vehicle ran a checkpoint, but he did not fire his weapon.

Captain Shambarger says Corporal Berg had a good reputation in his Guard unit, made up of soldiers from Ferdinand and the nearby town of Jasper. He was calm and quiet and did his job, the captain said, a “10 soldier” on a scale of 1 to 10. He was not the kind who was a “thrill seeker,” nor was he a hotshot looking to return from war with a pile of medals.

A Young Soldier

In 2002, when Dustin Berg left for basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., he was the first of four brothers to go anywhere much beyond Ferdinand, a town with mostly German roots and a place so precisely kept up that one resident describes Thursday as “mowing day.”

Looking back, Mary Lee Berg said she never had an inkling that her son might want to become a soldier. But at 17, while he was still studying at Forest Park High School and was busy with pole vaulting and the FFA, Dustin asked her to sign a waiver that would let him join the military before his 18th birthday.

Ms. Berg said no; a year later, he did not need her signature.

After he arrived in Iraq in early 2003, Corporal Berg’s phone calls home were upbeat, full of stories about the enormous rooms and gold bathroom appliances in Saddam Hussein’s palaces, his mother said. But he also told of a rugged existence for his unit, simple netting to sleep under and a child’s wading pool in lieu of a shower.

That November, a soldier arrived at Ms. Berg’s home with alarming news: Corporal Berg had been hit by small arms fire, presumably from the enemy, during a security mission.

Ms. Berg said she never asked her son much about what happened. A counselor trained to help military families told her not to push or pry. So she let it alone, even when he came home a few months later and even after he and three other members of the First Battalion, 152nd Infantry drove three hours to Camp Atterbury to be pinned with Purple Hearts, decorations meant for those wounded in combat.

Accounts of a Shooting

Capt. Dan Stigall, the Army’s prosecutor at Fort Knox in Corporal Berg’s case, declined to be interviewed for this article, and Connie Shaffery, a spokeswoman for Fort Knox, said prosecutors would not provide documents, besides basic charging papers, because the case is continuing. But summarized transcripts of sworn testimony from a February Article 32 hearing, the military’s equivalent of a grand jury proceeding, and copies of Corporal Berg’s most recent sworn statement to an Army investigator offer a glimpse of the case from both sides.

On Nov. 23, 2003, behind a village flea market, Corporal Berg fired three rounds from his weapon, he wrote in the statement, striking Mr. Zubeidi in the head and chest. Corporal Berg then took Mr. Zubeidi’s gun and shot himself in the left side.

Moments later, Corporal Berg ran from the area, toward several soldiers, holding his wound and screaming that he did not want to die, Sgt. First Class Joseph Milton said in sworn testimony. Sergeant Milton said he kept asking who had shot him, but Corporal Berg was rambling, emotional and nearly in tears. He spoke of a man in a red turban and a white “man dress.” As he bled, he never mentioned the Iraqi police officer, Sergeant Milton said.

In the months that followed, Corporal Berg provided military investigators with conflicting descriptions of what happened. At first, he told them that Mr. Zubeidi shot him before he fired his weapon. Other times, he said he shot first and Mr. Zubeidi returned fire.

Then in June 2004, Corporal Berg said he wanted to “clear up the facts” and admitted to investigators that he had fired all the shots, including the one into his own side.

In that sworn, written statement, Corporal Berg described working the patrol shift with Mr. Zubeidi. They talked about their lives in Iraq and in the United States, about weapons and knives – “all kinds of stuff,” Corporal Berg wrote. Then, Corporal Berg said, he saw the man in a red turban and white “man dress,” a description that his lawyer said was similar to that of a suspected insurgent reported in the area a day before.

But when Corporal Berg told Mr. Zubeidi that he was going to radio the man’s description so it could be investigated, he said Mr. Zubeidi said, “No, my friend.”

Corporal Berg said he reached for his radio anyway, and saw Mr. Zubeidi lift his weapon. “His face turned blank and his eyes looked vicious,” Corporal Berg wrote. “I thought he was going to kill me.” So, he said, he began firing. He said he started to run away, but stopped at the police officer’s weapon, which was lying on the ground, and started to panic about how the military might view the shooting and shot himself.

Before Corporal Berg’s shooting, Captain Shambarger said, three other soldiers in his unit were investigated for various incidents, leaving others tense. In other units, too, service members say they are wondering how the military is deciding which cases to try and which to drop. A marine captured on videotape killing an unarmed Iraqi in a mosque in Fallujah was cleared this month, while Second Lt. Ilario Pantano, a marine, is waiting to find out whether his shooting of the two Iraqis after a house raid will go to a court-martial or will be dropped, as advised by a hearing officer this month.

Other Investigations

As of late April, Army officials said they had opened 367 investigations into alleged abuse or homicide in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. Of those, 218 had been resolved, including 35 courts-martial and 105 administrative or other nonjudicial punishments against 129 soldiers.

In the case of Corporal Berg, he is charged with unpremeditated murder, multiple counts of false swearing, a false official statement, wounding himself in a combat zone and wearing a medal he did not qualify for.

Special Agent Clarence Joubert, an Army investigator who questioned Corporal Berg, probed one possible motive in the shooting. He asked Corporal Berg whether it was true that he had asked other Iraqi police officers to shoot him, so he could return to the United States.

Corporal Berg said no: “That was never said.”

“I shot myself ’cause I was scared of what was going to happen to me with the military,” Corporal Berg wrote in his statement. “It was not because of medals, drugs or even because it was maybe a way out of the desert.”

Corporal Berg now stands at the edge of two paths.

One leads through Fort Knox, where he has been required to live and work on weekdays while awaiting his hearing and perhaps a formal court-martial. If convicted, he could face life in prison.

The other goes back to Ferdinand, where he and his fiancée were married in front of 400 guests last weekend, and where a mortgage has been signed, a baby is on the way and his boss insists that his old job upholstering furniture is still available at Best Chairs Inc.

Gretchen Ruethling contributed reporting from Chicago for this article.

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today’s blogs
Firestorm
By David Wallace-Wells
Posted Monday, May 23, 2005, at 3:38 PM PT

Bloggers discuss the Army investigation into the death of Pat Tillman, President Bush’s affinity for John Lewis Gaddis, and the departure of Daniel Okrent from the New York Times.

Firestorm: The parents of celebrated NFL-player-turned-Army-Ranger Pat Tillman are “lashing out against the Army, saying the military’s investigations into Tillman’s friendly-fire death in Afghanistan last year were a sham,” reports the Washington Post. The parents allege that the Army “scripted” a more heroic story “because of the devastating public relations loss his death represented for the military.”

“I wish I could say that I’m shocked that the Army…and in the context of the GWOT, I mean the administration…could so cold-heartedly use the death of a soldier to further their flag-waving, bullshit agenda, but my shock-o-meter broke long ago,” writes Daily Kos contributor BarbinMD. “How many other families will never know the truth about the death of their loved one? We’ll never know.”

The Army investigation is harvesting some criticism from conservatives, too. “Tillman’s grieving parents want the soldiers who shot him punished, want the Army punished, want restitution for the tragic end of their son,” writes the esteemed John Podhoretz at the National Review Online‘s group blog The Corner. “Part of the horror of a tragedy, however, is that it is not a crime, and therefore there is no restitution possible.” Podhoretz quotes an anonymous Corner reader, who writes, “It is a betrayal of the trust and nobility that so many of our soldiers exhibit, and which is so crucial to public support of the military and its campaigns. At Thought Mechanics, Scott Jones, an avid fan of Tillman’s since his football days at Arizona State, agrees, calling the secretive investigation “an act of cowardice. It was an assault on the dignity of all men and women in uniform. And it was a slap in the face to the Tillman family.”

“The fact that it was later disclosed that his death was caused by friendly fire isn’t the shock — it’s the fact the Army kept this knowledge from the family while promoting a false one,” avers Alex DeLarge at avowedly contrarian Martini Republic. “The Army got its mythical heroic death publicly aired. Pat Tillman, Sr.’s comments are to me the telling ones with this administration, ‘Maybe lying’s not such a big deal any more.’”

Read more about the Post story on the Tillman family.

Does John Gaddis have a story for you…: In a speech delivered at Middlebury College in late April, Yale professor and frequent Bush critic John Lewis Gaddis recounted his great surprise at the warm reception of his work by President Bush and his administration in several recent meetings. His story—of Bush’s enthusiasm for critical literature and apparent eagerness to engage it personally—was merely the prologue to a speech on the president’s foreign policy, but it nevertheless has intrigued politico-bloggers from all corners.

“Changing the world, one professor at a time,” approves libertarian Eric at Classical Values. Others think it’s not the transformation of Gaddis, but a new image of the president, that resonates. “Bush apparently got interested in what Gaddis had to say based on his book. Which means yes, Bush actually reads, and he listens to well-reasoned critics. He made his staff read it too,” writes “warmongering neo-conservative” The Ten O’Clock Scholar, who also posts a transcript. “And this book was not about the liberal media or how wonderful George Bush’s policies are – far from it,” notes Avedon, guest-blogging at liberal hangout Atrios. “… I am flabbergasted.” At Wampum, progressive EBW flips past the prologue and dissects the substance of the speech.

Read more about Gaddis’ speech.

Public editor returns to private life: Daniel Okrent bid farewell to the New York Times Sunday in his last column as the paper’s public editor, “13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did.” Okrent outlines some regrets and missteps and predicts that his legacy won’t be altered editorial policy or even restored public faith, but his inauguration of the position. “When I move on, my successor will know how to do the job,” he writes, “and the people at The Times will know how to deal with it.”

“Thanks to Okrent for taking on a tough job at a tough time at the top paper,” glows Law Dork Chris Geidner, a recent law-school grad. “He … left the paper – and all papers – with a model for pushing againt the institutional inertia inherent in today’s corporate newspapers.” W.C. Varones loves the “refreshing” final column, which baldly states many of Okrent’s complaints about his patrons. At Rantingprofs, Chapel Hill academic Cori Dauber also mourns the departure of the Times’ first ombudsman—and the miniature treatment he gives the slew of topics in his final column. “It would have been wonderful indeed if Okrent had spent those alternating weeks writing on these topics, and anyone particularly driven to have their say in response — well, there’s always the blogosphere,” she writes.

Read more blog posts about Okrent’s final column.

Have a question, comment, or suggestion for Today’s Blogs? E-mail todaysblogs@slate.com.

today’s papers
No Nuclear Testing
By Eric Umansky
Posted Tuesday, May 24, 2005, at 12:55 AM PT

Everybody leads with 14 moderate senators announcing a deal that will head off a showdown on the filibuster, at least for now. The Democrats in the deal agreed to allow a floor vote on three of the 10 currently held-up judicial nominees: Janice Rogers Brown, William Pryor, and Priscilla Owen. In return, the Republicans in on the deal said they won’t kill the judicial filibuster so long as Democrats invoke it only in “extraordinary circumstances,” whatever that means.

The New York Times and Washington Post list two judges each who are currently being held up and, in an unwritten part of the deal, are slated to be sacrificed. At least that’s what Senate “negotiators” and “Democratic officials” said. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t rely on the anonymice and says nominations are still in play.

The 14 senators held the swing votes, so they didn’t have to bother getting their parties’ respective support. In fact, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist didn’t exactly sound elated, saying the bargain “has some good news, it has some disappointing news, and will require careful monitoring.” White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the deal “progress” but added, “We will continue working to push for an up-or-down vote on all our nominees.”

Frist has been considering a presidential run and was under pressure from conservatives to go nuclear and deliver all the nominees. The fact that some of the nominees are now going down means Frist stands to be, as the Post puts it, “one of the biggest losers” in the deal.

The Los Angeles Times details the conservative activists’ unhappiness. “The Republicans who lent their names to this travesty have undercut their president as well as millions of their most loyal voters,” said Gary Bauer. “Shame on them all.” (Though LAT doesn’t say it, the quote comes via a press release.)

The papers all trot out analyses, and none are as impressed with the deal as Sen. Byrd, who proclaimed modestly, “We have kept the Republic.” One prof told the Post, “I think they did what the Senate very often does. They kicked the can down the road.”

The Post alone fronts about 60 Iraqis killed in mostly terrorist attacks around the country. (The other papers reefer the bombings.) Ten Iraqis were killed and roughly 100 wounded in the bombing of a popular falafel restaurant in Baghdad. Another 20 to 30 people were killed by two car bombs outside a Shiite community center near Mosul. Late last night another car bomb outside a Shiite mosque south of Baghdad killed 10. Also, a top Iraqi national security official was assassinated. And the military announced that five American soldiers had died over the weekend.

Everybody mentions that Iraqi and U.S. forces have launched what military officials described as their biggest counterinsurgency sweep yet in Baghdad—”20,000 U.S. troops backed 15,000 Iraqi soldiers,” says the LAT. The NYT cites officials saying Iraqi forces are in the lead. Whatever the case, everybody says about 300 suspects have been arrested.

Nobody reports from the Baghdad neighborhood where the sweeps are still happening—except Knight Ridder (which credits an Iraqi employee on the story). “They came here and detained people randomly,” said one candy-store proprietor, who then took off after hearing an approaching chopper. One Shiite politician told KR, “These random attacks on people and houses gives the insurgents a bigger base.”

The LAT and NYT front the Supreme Court accepting its first abortion case in five years: It’s set to decide on the lack of a health exemption for a currently overturned parental notification law in New Hampshire.

The WP announces on Page One: “CHOLESTEROL DRUG CRESTOR POSES RISKS, JOURNAL SAYS; Study Suggests Use Only as Last Resort.” Not so much, says the NYT: “MIXED SAFETY RESULTS ON CHOLESTEROL DRUG.” The rate of complications with Crestor was higher than with its sibling drugs, but still very low. “The overwhelming majority of people who are taking it will have no problem at all,” said the president of the American Heart Association, as quoted in the LAT.

A NYT piece, based on an interview with a Syrian diplomat, says Damascus has stopped intel and military cooperation with the U.S. The diplomat cited hurt feelings over the administration’s complaints about Syria not cracking down on Iraqi insurgents. Not that there has been loads of cooperation recently. One U.S. commander said the contact has mostly been helpful to “mitigate” a number of “cross-border firings” of artillery. Which raises a question: Cross-border firings of artillery?!?!?

Pitstop for Juan Pablo Montoya
F1 > European GP, 2004-05-30 (Nürburgring): Sunday race

European GP: McLaren preview
Racing series F1
Date 2005-05-24

Round seven of the 2005 FIA Formula One World Championship, The European Grand Prix, takes place at the renowned Nürburgring, and is the first of two home races for Mercedes-Benz. Team McLaren Mercedes arrives in Germany lying in second place in the Constructors’ World Championship with 51 points for the second race in the space of eight days. Kimi Raikkonen is also second in the Drivers’ standings with 27 points, with Juan Pablo Montoya in eighth with a tally of 14.

Starting with the European Grand Prix, there will be only one qualifying session during a Grand Prix weekend. It will take place over a single-lap only on Saturday at 13:00. The running order will be reverse of the finishing order of the previous race. That means that Kimi, who won at Monaco last weekend, will be the last driver out on the track for qualifying at the Nürburgring.

The inaugural European Grand Prix took place in 1983 at Brands Hatch in Britain, since then there have been 14 races at four different circuits. In addition to Brands Hatch and the Nürburgring, Donington Park and Jerez have also played host to the race. The Nürburgring is on the site of the epic Nordschleife.

The legendary 14 mile / 22 km drive through the Eifel mountains regularly staged the German Grand Prix, before safety concerns saw the race transferred to Hockenheim in 1977. The revised track returned to the calendar in 1984 and since then has held the European Grand Prix on eight occasions.

Kimi Raikkonen:

“After such a great result in Monaco, I am really looking forward to racing again this coming weekend. The MP4-20 package is working really well and hopefully we will continue to be competitive in Germany. The Nürburgring has quite good grip and we use a medium downforce configuration as it has a mix of corners, straights and hairpins.”

“It is totally different to Monaco in this way, and it is of course a lot faster, although it is not one of the quickest. It is a fun track to drive, and hopefully we will be able to put on an exciting race for the Mercedes-Benz home crowd.”

Juan Pablo Montoya:

“I can’t wait to get back on track at the Nürburgring this weekend, and hopefully have a trouble free weekend to take advantage of the current performance of the car. This event is notorious for understeer, so there will be a focus on dialling it out during Friday’s Free Practice sessions.”

“Unlike Monaco there are a couple of overtaking opportunities at the Nürburgring, such as at the NGK Chicane and the hairpin in the Mercedes Arena. I am really looking forward to racing in front of the Mercedes-Benz fans and employees for the first time and enjoying their support.”

Alex Wurz:

“Because of the back-to-backs there has been no testing by Team McLaren Mercedes since the Monaco Grand Prix. The upcoming programme will see us return to the test track in the first week of June at Silverstone. As Juan Pablo mentioned, understeer is always present here, so in addition to tyre selection with Michelin, I will be working closely with the team on set-up work for the rest of the weekend.”

Martin Whitmarsh, CEO Formula One, Team McLaren Mercedes:

“The result in Monaco, and the race pace demonstrated by both Kimi and Juan Pablo, was very positive for the team and we are now looking to build on this at the Nürburgring. The European Grand Prix is the second race in a very intensive period for Formula One, with six Grands Prix in eight weeks.”

“To give you an idea of the logistical effort required, all the Team McLaren Mercedes racing equipment was packed and left Monaco shortly after 22:00 on the Sunday night after the race. Upon arrival at the Nürburgring just after 13:00 on Monday afternoon, garage build began immediately and was completed later the same day. As the Monaco race took place just a couple of days ago, there will be no major new developments to MP4-20 for this race.”

Norbert Haug, Vice President, Mercedes-Benz Motorsport:

“The European Grand Prix is following the Monaco race within just one week’s time. The Nürburgring race is one of two home Grands Prix for Mercedes-Benz. This track provides completely different challenges for the team compared to the street circuit of Monte Carlo.”

“About 60 percent of the track is run under full throttle and the circuit features a mixture of fast and slow sections. It is especially demanding for the aerodynamic efficiency of the car as well as the engine. The spectators coming to the Nürburgring will not only attend an exciting race like Barcelona or Monte Carlo, they will also experience attractive entertainment programmes between practice sessions and races.”

“Particularly the Mercedes-Benz display area behind the main grandstand has become a meeting point for Mercedes-Benz and motor sport fans of all colours. We will be happy to welcome everybody to live music, several competitions with valuable prizes and above all interview and autograph sessions with Mercedes-Benz DTM drivers as well as the Formula One drivers and members of the Team McLaren Mercedes team.”

-mclaren-

Start: Michael Schumacher leads the field
F1 > European GP, 2004-05-30 (Nürburgring): Sunday race

European GP: Ferrari preview
Racing series F1
Date 2005-05-24

The European Grand Prix used to move around, taking place at a variety of circuits, but it has had an almost permanent home at the Nürburgring, which has hosted this race nine times, including every year since 1997, except that in ’97 and ’98, just to confuse things, it was known as the Luxembourg GP.

Although the current circuit has been in use for over two decades, it is still referred to as the “New ‘Ring,” by those who remember the daunting 22 kilometres of the old Nordschleife track, that was eventually deemed too dangerous for modern grand prix cars.

At about the same time that the antiquated track was pensioned off, Dieter Gundel was beginning his motor racing career, working in electronics. Today he is Head of Electronics at the race tracks for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro.

“Twenty years ago, electronics was just beginning to become the “hot item” in motor racing,” says the German. “Ever since then it has developed from something that is quite useful and gives a little bit of an advantage into an element that is absolutely essential. Without electronics, nothing turns, nothing blinks, nothing does anything.”

Progress on electronics was slow until the advent of the computer and the first advantages seen on the cars were chiefly in terms of providing increased power. “We have to admit that the original ideas came from road cars and it is not a case of motor racing leading the development,” continues Gundel.

“The most obvious change was the switch from putting fuel in the engine with a carburettor to using fuel injection. It gave far greater control and allowed you to adjust more parameters.”

The other element that moved electronic development forward was the arrival of the turbocharged engines in the 80s. The turbocharger was quite a delicate piece of equipment and needed more accurate control, for elements such as the waste-gate.

“This is how electronics muscled its way into the sport,” recalls Gundel. “We had so much electronics it was a case of picking the area that gave the biggest advantage and of course one team would come up with something and the others would follow. Technology has moved at a rapid rate.”

“If you compare the power of calculation we have on the car nowadays with that of twenty years ago, you could not run a small computer game for kids with the power we had on the cars back then!”

Once the miracle of electronics had reached a point where it was taken for granted, the specialists in this field came under ever increasing pressure to come up with ever more sophisticated systems that were smaller, lighter and more resistant to vibration and especially to heat.

“The amount of wiring on the car has decreased significantly over the years,” says Gundel. “For example, we now use copper wires that are no thicker than a human hair for sensors for example. The wiring per metre is a fraction of what we had. We use more intelligent sensors that now communicate via digital signals, which is another technology that has come from road cars.

The hardware side has reduced in weight and size and technology means our experience has grown. In the past we used military connectors from tanks and airplanes, built to last for 5 years of use. It was good for F1 because not even we could break them. But if I came today with one of these connectors and showed it to (Chief Designer) Rory Byrne he would have a heart attack!

Today, electronics is used in every aspect of the car, but its most obvious use is in running the engine. “You have to inject fuel and you have to fire the spark,” maintains Gundel. “But on top of this is all the diagnostic monitoring, the back up systems and pumps. The diagnostic side has become far more important this year with engines having to last two race weekends.”

“We might have more than 20 sensors on the engine for diagnostics alone, apart from those used to actually run the engine. To be honest, for us here at Ferrari, this was not such a big change from the past, as we already had a fantastic record of reliability and that was partly down to our monitoring systems.”

The new rules, with the cars staying in parc ferme in between qualifying and the race, has also made the role of electronics more important, as software changes are one of the few areas that can be worked on.

“Apart from the engine, other areas where we can tune for performance using electronics are traction control, engine braking and differential performance. These are the only legal areas where we are allowed to work,” explains Gundel. “While the car is in parc ferme, we have the model of our strategies on the computer and we can tune them and are allowed to upload all our modifications into the car before the race.”

“Now, we analyse the performance of our cars on Friday and Saturday and try to improve areas that were not perfect, by running simulations. We try to combine all these tunings to give an overall improvement on the car without having to run the car. It is not all down to technology though and you still need to use the human brain. Sometimes it is our best friend!”

So will this weekend on home turf at the Nürburgring be a chance for Gundel to catch up with old friends from his racing past? “Not really,” he says with a hint of embarrassment. “As a child I was not at all interested in motor racing and when I started working with Bosch back in 1985, I stayed in the laboratory and did not go to the tracks. But when Data Logging and Telemetry became more common I would go to the occasional race.”

“At first the racing drivers were very suspicious of Data Logging and regarded it as a spy system. Now, the good drivers know they can improve with the help of the data and they spend a lot of time studying it. But to get back to the question, no the Nurburgring will not be a special weekend for me, except that I always find it a bit disturbing because all the people around me speak German!”

-ferrari-

Michael Schumacher
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Monaco fans watch the race
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Juan Pablo Montoya
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Michael Schumacher
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Michael Schumacher with no front wing
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

David Coulthard out
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Fernando Alonso
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Kimi Raikkonen
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Podium: race winner Kimi Raikkonen
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Champagne for race winner Kimi Raikkonen
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Start: Mark Webber and Nick Heidfeld
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Start: Kimi Raikkonen leads the field
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

David Coulthard
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race
Image by Red Bull Racing

Kimi Raikkonen
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race

Monaco Grand Prix
Raikkonen lays down world title challenge

Alan Henry in Monte Carlo
Monday May 23, 2005

Guardian

Kimi Raikkonen raised the world championship stakes in dramatic fashion yesterday. Proving yet again that the McLaren-Mercedes MP4-20 is now the fastest car in formula one, he scored an imposing victory in the most glamorous grand prix on the international calendar.
The tortuous streets of Monte Carlo, with their tight corners and high kerbs, could hardly offer more of a contrast to the wide open spaces of Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya where he had won the Spanish grand prix a fortnight before. Yet the Finn’s performance here was similarly flawless, with a crushing run to pole position, a blistering opening lap and the sheer speed to dictate the pace of the race, even when the cards appeared briefly to be stacked against him.

Raikkonen had almost broken Fernando Alonso’s challenge by the end of the opening lap when he was already 1.2sec ahead of the Spaniard, with Alonso’s Renault team-mate Giancarlo Fisichella up to third.

With 20 laps completed the McLaren was 5.9sec ahead, but when Christijan Albers spun his Minardi at the tricky downhill Mirabeau right-hander on lap 24, causing cars behind him to stop, the safety car was deployed just too late for Raikkonen to dive into the pits to refuel, a tactical option which both Renault drivers, both the Williams-BMWs and Felipe Massa’s Sauber promptly took advantage of.

Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari tapped the back of David Coulthard’s Red Bull in the same incident, breaking the nose of the Italian machine and the rear suspension of its rival. Schumacher continued after a stop for a replacement nose cone but Coulthard limped back to his pit to retire.

“There’s not much to say,” shrugged the Scot. “Albers spun his car going into the corner so I slowed down to avoid him. However, Michael couldn’t see me and he hit my car, which damaged the rear wing and suspension.”

It was the second time Coulthard had been involved in such an incident over the weekend. In Saturday free practice Juan Pablo Montoya’s McLaren suddenly slowed in front of Ralf Schumacher’s Toyota going up the hill to Casino Square, causing Coulthard to back off to avoid the two of them, only for Jacques Villeneuve to slam his Sauber into the back of the Red Bull, which in turn threw the Scot into the younger Schumacher’s Toyota, spinning it firmly into the barrier.

After corroborating this evidence with data downloaded from Montoya’s car, the stewards deleted his qualifying time, thereby consigning him to the back of the grid. Irony of ironies, he was joined there by Ralf Schumacher after the German driver crashed heavily at Tabac on his qualifying run, scattering oil and debris across the track.

Albers’ spin left Raikkonen fearful. “I was a bit worried when the safety car came out because I’d just missed the entry to the pit lane as my team was telling me to come in,” he said. “But the team told me I’d just have to build up a lead of 20 seconds before I made my refuelling stop. This was the crucial period for us, and the car really worked well this weekend.”

The safety car came in at the end of lap 28 and Raikkonen burst into action. With Jarno Trulli’s Toyota between him and Alonso he stretched his advantage to a remarkable 37.3sec by the time he made his single, 11sec stop at the end of lap 42. This was the defining moment and saw the Finn resume still 15.4sec ahead of the Renault.

Alonso had his hands full because his hard-compound Michelin rear tyres were losing grip and wearing heavily, his lap times dropping away as a result as he fell back into the clutches of the two Williams drivers.

Raikkonen won by 13.87sec from Nick Heidfeld’s Williams-BMW, the German driver’s best formula one result. He crossed the line ahead of his team-mate Mark Webber, for whom the satisfaction of a similar career-best result was tempered by the fact that the Williams squad had called Heidfeld in for his second refuelling stop first even though he was running fourth at the time behind Alonso’s Renault and the Australian driver. This enabled Heidfeld to leapfrog Webber, who was clearly unamused.

The manner in which Heidfeld dislodged Alonso from second place under braking for the waterfront chicane on lap 72 was as impressive as it was decisive. It gained the German driver some breathing space for the next couple of laps until Webber also squeezed ahead of Alonso after they both made a mess at the chicane, the issue eventually being resolved as the tough Australian fought it out wheel-to-wheel with Alonso going down to the next corner, where the Spaniard had no choice but to concede the line.

“It’s my first podium finish in formula one and it’s very good to have two cars on the podium here,” said Webber. “Apart from McLaren today we were much faster than anybody else but I was stuck behind Jarno Trulli’s Toyota in the opening stages of the race, then unfortunately Nick passed me at the second pit stop and we were again held up by Alonso, who was struggling with his tyres. I just wish I could have driven in some clean air today.”

Alonso scrabbled home in fourth, a few feet ahead of Montoya’s McLaren, Ralf Schumacher and his brother Michael, who forced his way past his Ferrari team-mate Rubens Barrichello to take seventh place on the last lap. Seldom can he have put so much effort into a tally of two points on this epic track.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

Yvetta Fedorova

May 24, 2005
How to Save Your Skin in the Season of Sun
By JANE E. BRODY

The outdoor season is now in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere, and with it comes a growing concern about melanoma, the fastest rising cancer in the world.

Once considered a rare form of skin cancer, as well as the most deadly, melanoma today is hardly uncommon. In fact, it is the most common cause of cancer in women ages 25 through 29 and second only to lung cancer in women 30 through 34.

Not that men are spared. This year, the American Cancer Society estimates that 33,580 cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in men in the United States, along with 26,000 women; a total of about 7,770 men and women will die of it. Although melanomas account for only 5 percent of skin cancers, they cause 80 percent of deaths from skin cancer.

But most serious cases of melanoma and most melanoma deaths can be prevented. All it takes is regular body vigilance and, most important, a great respect for the damage that can be caused by spending too much time in the sun without adequate protection. There is also emerging evidence that statins, the drugs taken by millions to lower serum cholesterol, can protect against sun-induced melanomas.

An overdose of sun is not only the leading cause of superficial skin cancers and wrinkly, leathery skin that makes people look older than their years, it is also now recognized as a major factor in transforming innocent moles into potentially deadly cancers.

Finding Abnormal Moles

Everyone has moles, an average of 10 to 40 a person, and new ones can develop at any time. Most are smaller than a pencil eraser. If they stay that way, without changing shape, color, size or surface, fine.

In December in The Journal of the American Medical Association, dermatologists at New York University School of Medicine and Royal Prince Albert Hospital in Sydney, Australia, suggested a revised mnemonic device for helping people recognize trouble signs in a mole.

Since 1985, dermatologists have relied on an ABCD criteria: A for asymmetry, B for border irregularity, C for color variations, and D for diameter greater than six millimeters (about a quarter of an inch). The New York and Sydney physicians suggested adding an E, for evolving, signifying changes in size; shape; symptoms, like itching or tenderness; surface, especially bleeding; and shades of color.

But you won’t know if a mole has changed unless you know where all of them are and what they look like. Dr. Howard L. Kaufman, co-director of the Columbia University Melanoma Center and author of “The Melanoma Book” (Gotham, $15), suggests making a map of all your moles, noting what each looks like, while standing naked in front of a full-length mirror and using a hand-held mirror to see your back.

In addition to the most obvious areas of skin, be sure to examine your scalp (part your hair in sections), ears, under your breasts and armpits, under your fingernails and toenails, the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

As you go, record what you find on a front and rear map of your body. A once-a-month repetition of this examination is advised. If you cannot do this on your own, have a close relative or friend help you, and perhaps return the favor.

If anything unusual is found, either in a new mole or old one, see a dermatologist without delay. If melanoma is caught and treated while it’s still a flat lesion, the cure rate is 100 percent. Usually the treatment is simple outpatient surgery.

But the cure rate drops to 70 percent once the cancer has invaded underlying tissue or reached a nearby lymph node, and survival is less than 15 percent once the disease has spread elsewhere in the body.

Preventing Melanoma

A number of research studies have linked melanoma later in life to bad sunburns experienced in childhood, adolescence or the early 20′s. But at any age, periodic, unprotected and especially prolonged exposure to sunlight can get a melanoma started in Caucasians and other light-skinned people. (In dark-skinned people, melanomas occur mainly on the light parts of the hands and feet.)

Catherine M. Poole, author with Dr. DuPont Guerry IV of “Melanoma” (Yale University Press, $16.95) and herself a melanoma survivor, urges parents to set a good example by adopting sensible sun behavior and making sun protection as automatic as fastening a seat belt.

“A person who has a history of severe sunburns as a child or teenager is at an especially high risk for the development of melanoma,” Ms. Poole wrote. “Even just one or two bad sunburns can increase the risk of melanoma in later life.”

Everyone in the family should be using sunscreen with an S.P.F. of at least 15 on exposed skin all year long. Babies should always be kept out of the sun, and toddlers, older children and adults should be well protected with hats and clothing or sunscreen.

Most people who use sunscreen don’t use enough. It should take an ounce of lotion to cover an adult in a bathing suit. Sunscreen should be applied about 20 to 30 minutes before going out and reapplied on dry skin after swimming (“waterproof” screens are helpful, but not enough once you’re out of the water).

Look for sunscreens that protect against both UV-A and UV-B rays. All sunscreens contain substances that block the UV-B rays that cause sunburn (the S.P.F. rating refers only to these agents). The most effective protection against skin-damaging, cancer-causing UV-A rays comes from zinc oxide, Parsol 1789 (avobenzone) and Eusolex 8020, Dr. Kaufman reported. Some UV-A protection is afforded by titanium oxide, oxybenzone and dioxybenzone.

Some experts have theorized that sunscreens can actually promote melanomas and skin damage by increasing the time people can spend in the sun before they burn, but no studies have yet shown this. It should not happen if people are careful to use sunscreens that block UV-A as well as UV-B rays.

Melanomas can also develop on the scalp and in the eyes, so don’t forget a hat and sunglasses, and on the lips, which should be protected by sunblocking lip balm or lipstick. Be sure to protect your skin on cloudy days, too, since clouds do not filter out UV-A radiation.

People at the greatest risk of developing melanoma, those with fair complexions who burn and freckle readily, are also at high risk of developing superficial skin cancers. People with a large number of moles and those with melanoma in close relatives are also at increased risk.

Last year in “The Melanoma Letter” published by the Skin Cancer Foundation, Dr. Marie-France Demierre of Boston University School of Medicine described the growing evidence for statins as a protector against melanoma.

These cholesterol-lowering agents interfere with the action of two oncogenes, mutations in Ras and Rho proteins, that play a role in the development of melanomas. Laboratory studies also suggest that statins may promote programmed cell death and thus may be useful as therapy for melanoma patients.

But the wise person who ventures outdoors would not rely on such chemoprotection at this point. Sensible behavior in the sun provides the best protection, and only you can apply it.

For more information, a helpful book is “Sun Protection for Life” (New Harbinger) by Mary Mills Barrow and John F. Barrow.

Jane E. Brody can be reached at personalhealth@nytimes.com.

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June 2005 Issue

Natural-Born Liars

Why do we lie, and why are we so good at it? Because it works

By David Livingstone Smith

Deception runs like a red thread throughout all of human history. It sustains literature, from Homer’s wily Odysseus to the biggest pop novels of today. Go to a movie, and odds are that the plot will revolve around deceit in some shape or form. Perhaps we find such stories so enthralling because lying pervades human life. Lying is a skill that wells up from deep within us, and we use it with abandon. As the great American observer Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago: “Everybody lies … every day, every hour, awake, asleep, in his dreams, in his joy, in his mourning. If he keeps his tongue still his hands, his feet, his eyes, his attitude will convey deception.” Deceit is fundamental to the human condition.
Research supports Twain’s conviction. One good example was a study conducted in 2002 by psychologist Robert S. Feldman of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Feldman secretly videotaped students who were asked to talk with a stranger. He later had the students analyze their tapes and tally the number of lies they had told. A whopping 60 percent admitted to lying at least once during 10 minutes of conversation, and the group averaged 2.9 untruths in that time period. The transgressions ranged from intentional exaggeration to flat-out fibs. Interestingly, men and women lied with equal frequency; however, Feldman found that women were more likely to lie to make the stranger feel good, whereas men lied most often to make themselves look better.

In another study a decade earlier by David Knox and Caroline Schacht, both now at East Carolina University, 92 percent of college students confessed that they had lied to a current or previous sexual partner, which left the husband-and-wife research team wondering whether the remaining 8 percent were lying. And whereas it has long been known that men are prone to lie about the number of their sexual conquests, recent research shows that women tend to underrepresent their degree of sexual experience. When asked to fill out questionnaires on personal sexual behavior and attitudes, women wired to a dummy polygraph machine reported having had twice as many lovers as those who were not, showing that the women who were not wired were less honest. It’s all too ironic that the investigators had to deceive subjects to get them to tell the truth about their lies.

These references are just a few of the many examples of lying that pepper the scientific record. And yet research on deception is almost always focused on lying in the narrowest sense-literally saying things that aren’t true. But our fetish extends far beyond verbal falsification. We lie by omission and through the subtleties of spin. We engage in myriad forms of nonverbal deception, too: we use makeup, hairpieces, cosmetic surgery, clothing and other forms of adornment to disguise our true appearance, and we apply artificial fragrances to misrepresent our body odors. We cry crocodile tears, fake orgasms and flash phony “have a nice day” smiles. Out-and-out verbal lies are just a small part of the vast tapestry of human deceit.

The obvious question raised by all of this accounting is: Why do we lie so readily? The answer: because it works. The Homo sapiens who are best able to lie have an edge over their counterparts in a relentless struggle for the reproductive success that drives the engine of evolution. As humans, we must fit into a close-knit social system to succeed, yet our primary aim is still to look out for ourselves above all others. Lying helps. And lying to ourselves–a talent built into our brains–helps us accept our fraudulent behavior.

Passport to Success

If this bald truth makes any one of us feel uncomfortable, we can take some solace in knowing we are not the only species to exploit the lie. Plants and animals communicate with one another by sounds, ritualistic displays, colors, airborne chemicals and other methods, and biologists once naively assumed that the sole function of these communication systems was to transmit accurate information. But the more we have learned, the more obvious it has become that nonhuman species put a lot of effort into sending inaccurate messages.

The mirror orchid, for example, displays beautiful blue blossoms that are dead ringers for female wasps. The flower also manufactures a chemical cocktail that simulates the pheromones released by females to attract mates. These visual and olfactory cues keep hapless male wasps on the flower long enough to ensure that a hefty load of pollen is clinging to their bodies by the time they fly off to try their luck with another orchid in disguise. Of course, the orchid does not “intend” to deceive the wasp. Its fakery is built into its physical design, because over the course of history plants that had this capability were more readily able to pass on their genes than those that did not. Other creatures deploy equally deceptive strategies. When approached by an erstwhile predator, the harmless hog-nosed snake flattens its head, spreads out a cobralike hood and, hissing menacingly, pretends to strike with maniacal aggression, all the while keeping its mouth discreetly closed.

These cases and others show that nature favors deception because it provides survival advantages. The tricks become increasingly sophisticated the closer we get to Homo sapiens on the evolutionary chain. Consider an incident between Mel and Paul:

Mel dug furiously with her bare hands to extract the large succulent corm from the rock-hard Ethiopian ground. It was the dry season and food was scarce. Corms are edible bulbs somewhat like onions and are a staple during these long, hard months. Little Paul sat nearby and surreptitiously observed Mel’s labors. Paul’s mother was out of sight; she had left him to play in the grass, but he knew she would remain within earshot in case he needed her. Just as Mel managed, with a final pull, to yank her prize out of the earth, Paul let out an ear-splitting cry that shattered the peace of the savannah. His mother rushed to him. Heart pounding and adrenaline pumping, she burst upon the scene and quickly sized up the situation: Mel had obviously harassed her darling child. Shrieking, she stormed after the bewildered Mel, who dropped the corm and fled. Paul’s scheme was complete. After a furtive glance to make sure nobody was looking, he scurried over to the corm, picked up his prize and began to eat. The trick worked so well that he used it several more times before anyone wised up.

The actors in this real-life drama were not people. They were Chacma baboons, described in a 1987 article by primatologists Richard W. Byrne and Andrew Whiten of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland for i magazine and later recounted in Byrne’s 1995 book The Thinking Ape (Oxford University Press). In 1983 Byrne and Whiten began noticing deceptive tactics among the mountain baboons in Drakensberg, South Africa. Catarrhine primates, the group that includes the Old World monkeys, apes and ourselves, are all able to tactically dupe members of their own species. The deceptiveness is not built into their appearance, as with the mirror orchid, nor is it encapsulated in rigid behavioral routines like those of the hog-nosed snake. The primates’ repertoires are calculated, flexible and exquisitely sensitive to shifting social contexts.

Byrne and Whiten catalogued many such observations, and these became the basis for their celebrated Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis, which states that the extraordinary explosion of intelligence in primate evolution was prompted by the need to master ever more sophisticated forms of social trickery and manipulation. Primates had to get smart to keep up with the snowballing development of social gamesmanship.

The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis suggests that social complexity propelled our ancestors to become progressively more intelligent and increasingly adept at wheeling, dealing, bluffing and conniving. That means human beings are natural-born liars. And in line with other evolutionary trends, our talent for dissembling dwarfs that of our nearest relatives by several orders of magnitude.


The complex choreography of social gamesmanship remains central to our lives today. The best deceivers continue to reap advantages denied to their more honest or less competent peers. Lying helps us facilitate social interactions, manipulate others and make friends.

There is even a correlation between social popularity and deceptive skill. We falsify our ré³µmé³ to get jobs, plagiarize essays to boost grade-point averages and pull the wool over the eyes of potential sexual partners to lure them into bed. Research shows that liars are often better able to get jobs and attract members of the opposite sex into relationships. Several years later Feldman demonstrated that the adolescents who are most popular in their schools are also better at fooling their peers. Lying continues to work. Although it would be self-defeating to lie all the time (remember the fate of the boy who cried, “Wolf!”), lying often and well remains a passport to social, professional and economic success.

Fooling Ourselves
Ironically, the primary reasons we are so good at lying to others is that we are good at lying to ourselves. There is a strange asymmetry in how we apportion dishonesty. Although we are often ready to accuse others of deceiving us, we are astonishingly oblivious to our own duplicity. Experiences of being a victim of deception are burned indelibly into our memories, but our own prevarications slip off our tongues so easily that we often do not notice them for what they are.

The strange phenomenon of self-deception has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for more than 2,000 years. On the face of it, the idea that a person can con oneself seems as nonsensical as cheating at solitaire or embezzling money from one’s own bank account. But the paradoxical character of self-deception flows from the idea, formalized by French polymath René „escartes in the 17th century, that human minds are transparent to their owners and that introspection yields an accurate understanding of our own mental life. As natural as this perspective is to most of us, it turns out to be deeply misguided.

If we hope to understand self-deception, we need to draw on a more scientifically sound conception of how the mind works. The brain comprises a number of functional systems. The system responsible for cognition–the thinking part of the brain–is somewhat distinct from the system that produces conscious experiences. The relation between the two systems can be thought of as similar to the relation between the processor and monitor of a personal computer. The work takes place in the processor; the monitor does nothing but display information the processor transfers to it. By the same token, the brain’s cognitive systems do the thinking, whereas consciousness displays the information that it has received. Consciousness plays a less important role in cognition than previously expected.

This general picture is supported by a great deal of experimental evidence. Some of the most remarkable and widely discussed studies were conducted several decades ago by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, now professor emeritus at the University of California at San Diego. In one experiment, Libet placed subjects in front of a button and a rapidly moving clock and asked them to press the button whenever they wished and to note the time, as displayed on the clock, the moment they felt an impulse to press the button. Libet also attached electrodes over the motor cortex, which controls movement, in each of his subjects to monitor the electrical tension that mounts as the brain prepares to initiate an action. He found that our brains begin to prepare for action just over a third of a second before we consciously decide to act. In other words, despite appearances, it is not the conscious mind that decides to perform an action: the decision is made unconsciously. Although our consciousness likes to take the credit (so to speak), it is merely informed of unconscious decisions after the fact. This study and others like it suggest that we are systematically deluded about the role consciousness plays in our lives. Strange as it may seem, consciousness may not do any-thing except display the results of unconscious cognition.


This general model of the mind, supported by various experiments beyond Libet’s, gives us exactly what we need to resolve the paradox of self-deception–at least in theory. We are able to deceive ourselves by invoking the equivalent of a cognitive filter between unconscious cognition and conscious awareness. The filter preempts information before it reaches consciousness, preventing selected thoughts from proliferating along the neural pathways to awareness.

Solving the Pinocchio Problem
But why would we filter information? Considered from a biological perspective, this notion presents a problem. The idea that we have an evolved tendency to deprive ourselves of information sounds wildly implausible, self-defeating and biologically disadvantageous. But once again we can find a clue from Mark Twain, who bequeathed to us an amazingly insightful explanation. “When a person cannot deceive himself,” he wrote, “the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.” Self-deception is advantageous because it helps us lie to others more convincingly. Concealing the truth from ourselves conceals it from others.

In the early 1970s biologist Robert L. Trivers, now at Rutgers University, put scientific flesh on Twain’s insight. Trivers made the case that our flair for self-deception might be a solution to an adaptive problem that repeatedly faced ancestral humans when they attempted to deceive one another. Deception can be a risky business. In the tribal, hunter-gatherer bands that were presumably the standard social environment in which our hominid ancestors lived, being caught red-handed in an act of deception could result in social ostracism or banishment from the community, to become hyena bait. Because our ancestors were socially savvy, highly intelligent primates, there came a point when they became aware of these dangers and learned to be self-conscious liars.

This awareness created a brand-new problem. Uncomfortable, jittery liars are bad liars. Like Pinocchio, they give themselves away by involuntary, nonverbal behaviors. A good deal of experimental evidence indicates that humans are remarkably adept at making inferences about one another’s mental states on the basis of even minimal exposure to nonverbal information. As Freud once commented, “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.” In an effort to quell our rising anxiety, we may automatically raise the pitch of our voice, blush, break out into the proverbial cold sweat, scratch our nose or make small movements with our feet as though barely squelching an impulse to flee.

Alternatively, we may attempt to rigidly control the tone of our voice and, in an effort to suppress telltale stray movements, raise suspicion by our stiff, wooden bearing. In any case, we sabotage our own efforts to deceive. Nowadays a used-car salesman can hide his shifty eyes behind dark sunglasses, but this cover was not available during the Pleistocene epoch. Some other solution was required.

Natural selection appears to have cracked the Pinocchio problem by endowing us with the ability to lie to ourselves. Fooling ourselves allows us to selfishly manipulate others around us while remaining conveniently innocent of our own shady agendas.

If this is right, self-deception took root in the human mind as a tool for social manipulation. As Trivers noted, biologists propose that the overriding function of self-deception is the more fluid deception of others. Self-deception helps us ensnare other people more effectively. It enables us to lie sincerely, to lie without knowing that we are lying. There is no longer any need to put on an act, to pretend that we are telling the truth. Indeed, a self-deceived person is actually telling the truth to the best of his or her knowledge, and believing one’s own story makes it all the more persuasive.

Although Trivers’s thesis is difficult to test, it has gained wide currency as the only biologically realistic explanation of self-deception as an adaptive feature of the human mind. The view also fits very well with a good deal of work on the evolutionary roots of social behavior that has been supported empirically.


Of course, self-deception is not always so absolute. We are sometimes aware that we are willing dupes in our own con game, stubbornly refusing to explicitly articulate to ourselves just what we are up to. We know that the stories we tell ourselves do not jibe with our behavior, or they fail to mesh with physical signs such as a thumping heart or sweaty palms that betray our emotional states. For example, the students described earlier, who admitted their lies when watching themselves on videotape, knew they were lying at times, and most likely they did not stop themselves because they were not disturbed by this behavior.

At other times, however, we are happily unaware that we are pulling the wool over our own eyes. A biological perspective helps us understand why the cognitive gears of self-deception engage so smoothly and silently. They cleverly and imperceptibly embroil us in performances that are so skillfully crafted that the act gives every indication of complete sincerity, even to the actors themselves.



© 1996-2005 Scientific American, Inc. All rights reserved.

Start: Kimi Raikkonen leads the field
F1 > Monaco GP, 2005-05-22 (Monte Carlo): Sunday race