Jonah:

I have a dim and not-very-reliable recollection of reading something about truth serum. The gist was, that it is no such thing. It’s just a guard-dropping serum, a tongue loosener. Depending on the circumstances, and on your own training and personality, what you babble under “truth serum” may be a pack of lies, or just… babble. Getting anything worthwhile out of it is, for your interrogator, quite an art, and definitely not a science.

And you, of all people, might appreciate this reader response to my own comments about Mel:

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> [Me, in my July Diary] Isn’t the courteous, civilized, thoughtful Mel just a mask he wears to
> deceive us? Well, duh, of course it is!
[Reader response] From a very early Simpsons episode:
Moe: Hey, you can level with me. You got a domestic situation?
Homer: You might say that. My wife’s gonna leave me ‘cause she thinks I’m a pig.
Moe: Homer.
Homer: What?
Moe: Marge is right. You are a pig. You can ask anyone in this bar.
Homer: What?
Homer: Hey, Barney, am I a pig?
Barney: You’re no more of a pig than I am. (belches loudly)
Homer: Oh, no!
Moe: See? You’re a pig. Barney’s a pig. Larry’s a pig. We’re all pigs.
Except for one difference: Once in a while, we can crawl out of the
slop, hose ourselves off, and act like human beings.
[Reader continues] I’ve long considered this a core concept of conservatism, usually with
the Simpsons line as its standard expression.