Sci fi: computer guy develops lie detector (called SCIP?) / cloning Neanderthals

Looking for a friend, who e-mailed me this description:

I'm looking for a book I read in grad school - fiction, sci-fi genre. It is about a computer genius who develops a real lie detector machine called a SCIP (Can't remember what it stood for).
The book is about his development of the machine, how he himself lied about something (or maybe stole someone else's idea) to make the machine, he works with a professor who is interested in cloning neanderthals... vague I know but anyway other than google to search for this?

Huh. While the plot is wildly different than what you describe, The Eyre Affair did feature some scenes with cloned neanderthals who were described as so good at reading body language that they were living lie detectors.

Here's a list of science fiction works with neanderthal characters. None of the given plots seem to match well with your description, but maybe you friend can spot a familiar title:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthals_in_popular_culture

Also, can we have a date range for when your friend was in grad school? (We don't know how old he is!)

Were there actually cloned Neanderthals in the book, or was it something the professor was working on but hadn't actually accomplished yet?

Could this be The Truth Machine by James Halperin? Some of the details match.

OK, my friend on whose behalf I was posting said this:

I found them, actually two books that I was meshing: Frameshift and Truth Machine. I read them about the same time.

So yes, jldarden, and thanks!