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The “brain fingerprinting” test featured in Netflix’s Making a Murderer is an EEG-based attempt to detect whether someone recognizes concealed information—not a device that directly detects lies or proves guilt. Its inventor, neuroscientist Lawrence “Larry” Farwell, and former business partners at Brainwave Science fought over accusations of fraud, commercial claims and ownership of patents associated with the technology. Those disputes produced court orders, but the allegations should not be mistaken for findings that either side committed criminal fraud—or for a judicial verdict on the science.
What “brain fingerprinting” measures
Farwell’s system uses electroencephalography (EEG): sensors on the scalp record electrical activity while a person sees or hears a sequence of stimuli. In a concealed-information test, some items are designed to contain a detail that only someone familiar with the relevant event would recognize. Other items serve as known targets or irrelevant controls. Researchers analyze event-related potentials, including the P300 response and Farwell’s formulation called P300-MERMER.
The intended inference is narrow: a response may indicate that a stimulus is familiar or that the person recognizes information. It does not, by itself, establish how the person learned it, when they encountered it, or whether they participated in a crime. A person might recognize a detail from news coverage, an investigator’s questions, an innocent presence at a scene or some other exposure. Calling the method a “lie detector” therefore overstates what it is designed to infer.
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Farwell’s 2012 review describes concealed-information detection using event-related brain potentials and reports highly favorable performance. It is a review authored by the technology’s principal proponent, so its claims are evidence of what Farwell reports, not a neutral consensus statement.
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Why it appeared in Making a Murderer
The technology gained a broad audience when Farwell tested Steven Avery for the second season of Netflix’s Making a Murderer. The program showed Farwell’s test and his account of what its result indicated. That television segment was not an independent scientific replication or a court ruling, and a claimed result about recognition of selected information is not equivalent to a finding that Avery was innocent. The test did not itself overturn his conviction.
The distinction matters: a documentary can show the procedure and report the examiner’s interpretation, but it cannot establish that the protocol works reliably across suspects, crimes and real-world conditions. Nor does an appearance in a high-profile case demonstrate that courts generally accept the method.
How a business partnership became a patent fight
According to a 2021 GeekWire investigation, Farwell and Krishna Ika formed Brainwave Science in 2012 to commercialize the technology internationally. The partnership broke down, and Farwell was forced out in 2016, the report said. The dispute extended beyond business conduct to four patents associated with brain-fingerprinting technology and a web of companies that included American Scientific Innovations, Brain Fingerprinting Laboratories, Life Science & Technology and Neuro Science Technologies.
GeekWire reported that three patents were obtained by Farwell in the 1990s and a fourth was issued in 2010. It also reported that the older patents expired in 2013 and 2014, and that the newer patent expired in 2018 after maintenance fees were not paid. Expiration does not settle who held rights at an earlier point, whether an assignment was promised or completed, or whether claims concerning past conduct remain. Patent status and the validity of the scientific method are separate questions.
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The opposing fraud allegations
The accusations ran in both directions. They were claims made in a contentious business and intellectual-property dispute, not a single established account of what happened.
| Farwell’s allegations about Brainwave Science | Brainwave Science’s allegations about Farwell and related entities |
|---|---|
| Farwell alleged that the company marketed counterfeit or inadequately supported brain-fingerprinting technology, invoked his name or reputation without appropriate expertise, and promoted technology that had not undergone the testing or peer review he associated with his own work. He also pointed to reported investigations in several countries. | The company alleged that Farwell had promised or purported to assign patents to it, although the patents had previously been transferred to entities associated with him. It also alleged that Farwell and related entities manufactured a dispute over ownership and made damaging statements about the company and its technology. |
Brainwave Science denied Farwell’s claims. The GeekWire account reported the allegations and the parties’ positions; it does not turn those accusations into adjudicated facts. In particular, “fraud” in the parties’ public descriptions or pleadings should not be read as proof of a criminal offense.
What the courts did—and did not decide
Washington federal court: intervention and vacatur
Farwell and Neuro Science Technologies went to arbitration. On February 25, 2020, a federal judgment confirmed an arbitration award by stipulation. Brainwave Science later sought to intervene, arguing it had an interest in the patent-ownership dispute and had not been included in the earlier proceeding.
On December 18, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted Brainwave Science’s motion to intervene and vacated the February judgment. The order reflects a procedural decision about an interested party’s opportunity to participate. It did not resolve the entire patent dispute for either side, decide whether the test works, or establish that the allegations of fraud were true.
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New York proceedings
Brainwave Science also brought a New York action concerning ownership of the intellectual property. A November 23, 2021 decision in Brainwave Science, Inc. v. Farwell addressed claims and motions in that litigation; it should be read for the particular rulings it made, not summarized as a blanket finding of fraud. See the decision.
A 2023 New York decision discussed an injunction restricting statements that Brainwave Science had committed fraud, that its intellectual property was counterfeit, or that the company was unqualified to provide the technology. An injunction governs conduct under the terms of a court order; it is not necessarily a final determination of the truth or falsity of every underlying accusation. The 2023 decision should be understood in that case-specific context.
Brainwave Science filed a separate federal trade-secret case in 2021, according to the docket record. The available material cited here does not establish the ultimate 2026 disposition of every related case. Readers should not treat older docket summaries as a current, complete account of the litigation.
Is the science established?
There are three distinct propositions to keep apart:
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- The measurement technique is real. EEG records scalp electrical activity, and the P300 is a recognized event-related brain potential. Researchers can study brain responses associated with recognition.
- The forensic interpretation is contested. Moving from “this stimulus elicited a different response” to “this person remembers a crime detail,” and then to “this person committed the crime,” involves increasingly strong inferences. Each needs validation and safeguards beyond the existence of the brain signal.
- Farwell’s performance claims are not the same as independent consensus. Farwell-authored work reports strong results, including a later field study associated with his research. Critics, including Northwestern psychologist Peter Rosenfeld, have challenged the methods, independence, generalizability and interpretation of those claims.
For a forensic test to support a responsible conclusion, investigators would need to show that the supposedly secret details were genuinely withheld; that probes and controls were designed fairly; that the subject could not have learned the details elsewhere; and that analysts did not know the expected result. Studies should report indeterminate outcomes, establish error rates for relevant populations and be independently replicated. A result from a selected or controlled sample may not transfer to a field investigation.
Common hazards include media exposure, accidental disclosure by investigators, novelty or emotional salience that produces a response for reasons other than crime-related knowledge, and circular validation—for example, judging a test accurate using labels that were themselves based on the same disputed evidence. Medication, sleep deprivation, injury or neurological conditions may also affect measurement or interpretation. Even an accurate recognition finding cannot identify the source of the memory on its own.
Farwell’s review and later field-study publication present the proponent’s case. Rosenfeld’s critique and related reprint present scientific objections. The existence of this published disagreement supports describing the method as contested, rather than as a generally established forensic instrument.
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| Brain fingerprinting | Polygraph | |
|---|---|---|
| Signal measured | EEG responses from the scalp, including event-related potentials | Physiological changes such as heart rate, respiration and skin conductance |
| Core inference | Possible recognition of concealed information | Arousal patterns associated with questioning |
| What it does not directly show | Whether recognition means the subject lied, committed a crime or learned the detail innocently | Whether arousal is caused by deception rather than anxiety or another factor |
| Important vulnerabilities | Contaminated probes, prior exposure and ambiguous recognition | Non-deceptive arousal, countermeasures and examiner interpretation |
Neither method is a universal truth-reading device. Legal admissibility is jurisdiction- and case-dependent, and one court’s handling of particular evidence does not establish broad scientific acceptance.
How to interpret the Netflix-era claims
When a company, examiner or television program says a brain-based test “cleared” someone, ask what proposition was actually tested. Were the stimuli genuinely secret? Could the person have seen them elsewhere? Was the result independently analyzed and replicated? Does the conclusion concern recognition, or does it leap to guilt or innocence? A test may potentially serve as an investigative lead, but a lead is not proof.
The business dispute also cannot settle the scientific one. A ruling about who may intervene in a patent case, a fight over licensing or an injunction concerning public statements says little by itself about whether a concealed-information test has known real-world error rates. Conversely, a scientific study would not resolve who owned a patent or whether a party breached a business agreement.
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