(NewsNation) — In a recent video, comedian John Oliver decided to tackle one of the most important and controversial aspects of policing: interrogations and confessions.

On Last Week Tonight through HBO, Oliver described the different police interrogation techniques out there as “all bulls**t” and “junk science.” Oliver expressed that certain interrogations often lead to false confessions.

“The truth is there are a number of reasons a person might confess to something they didn’t do. A lot of that comes down to what happens in a police interrogation room,” Oliver said.

NewsNation host Dan Abrams and retired Tulsa police Lt. Sean “Sticks” Larkin took issue with Oliver’s segment on Monday’s “Dan Abrams Live” show.

“The junk science, as Oliver calls it, has put literally thousands of guilty suspects behind bars over the years and brought justice for the families of those victims. It has helped break countless cases. It has saved lives. Now, unscrupulous cops should be stopped or even prosecuted. But this isn’t nearly as funny or as straightforward as Oliver portrays it,” Abrams said Monday.

In his video, Oliver pointed to the Reid Technique often used by authorities in interrogations. He compared the technique to taking a Buzzfeed quiz when it comes to accuracy and the pursuit of truth.

Retired homicide detective James Trainum appeared on Oliver’s segment, calling the technique “baloney.”

“The Reid people admit that it’s not based on any science whatsoever. It’s just based on their own observations,” Trainum said. “The real science says it’s baloney. It doesn’t work. When they’ve done experiments with it, they pretty much show that the accuracy is like flipping a coin. It’s 50/50.”

Larkin said the goal of an interrogation is to reveal the truth.

“The law enforcement profession is kind of a punching bag in some portions of the media right now. I myself had been involved in numerous interviews, interrogations with suspects through the years. And the whole goal is obviously to elicit a truthful statement from the person that you’re talking to. Every single person that sits down with us on one of these interviews when they’re considered a suspect, they get the exact same Miranda Rights read to them as everybody else,” Larkin shared.

Oliver said investigators can grind people down, sometimes even induing them to lie, during interrogations for hours to gain a confession.

“The police in this country can flat-out lie to you to make you think you have no choice but to confess. Some of the lies they tell are simply ridiculous,” Oliver said.

“The problem with police interrogations right now is the same problem that we have with policing at large. They’re emboldened to act however they like in a system where they hold an undue amount of power with very few protections for civilians, especially the most vulnerable. Because there can be little to no consequences for extracting a false confession.”

Both Abrams and Larkin agreed with Oliver that false confessions are a problem.

“To be clear, false confessions are a real thing and a real issue. In fact, many of the cases where people were convicted and later exonerated based on DNA evidence came as a result of false confessions. But the notion that somehow confessions on the whole are this horrible thing to use, or encouraging in law enforcement, is just absurd,” Abrams said.

Larkin weighed in: “We’re not trying to put innocent people in prison for things that they did not do wrong. We’re not trying to get confessions from people that are not truthful suspects.”

Abrams believes false confessions are an issue that need to be addressed. Oliver thinks all interrogations should be recorded in their entirety and investigators should not be allowed to lie to people being questioned.

According to Oliver, Oregon, Illinois and Utah have banned police from lying to juvenile suspects. New York has introduced legislation that would ban lying to all suspects and require courts to analyze the reliability of confession evidence before it’s allowed to be used in court.

Meanwhile, Larkin puts it this way:

“There’s a whole lot of people that can say how this job can be done. And I’ll tell you right now, police departments across the country are hiring. So feel free to jump in and you guys give it a shot.”