From its humble beginnings as a laboratory tool in the early 1970s, email has become a vital tool of business. It's the first thing most executives check in the morning, and the last thing they do at night. All very well. <A HREF="http://www.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/09/30/execed.lies/index.html?eref=rss_tech">But can you trust it?</A> A strange question perhaps--but a relevant one following some innovative (and perhaps alarming) new research by professors at three business schools.

Psychologists have long known that people find it easier to mislead and dissemble in written communication, without the telltale visual clues which help others know when someone is lying. But the two new studies, by business professors at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, Rutgers University in New Jersey and Chicago's DePaul University, suggest that people are notably more likely to lie in an email even than in traditional pen-and-paper communication.