The Japan Times Online published the following reader’s letter:
Challenging an American icon
Regarding the June 21 Washington Post article “Private eye who found Levy bone declines lie test”: If most people challenged or disregarded the place of the polygraph test in American police investigations the way that private investigator Joe McCann is reported to have done in the case of murdered federal intern Chandra Levy, they would probably fall under suspicion of holding aberrant political beliefs. In the current climate, they might even be viewed as terrorist threats.
Separate from the matter of the accuracy and reliability of the polygraph at detecting lies is the socially enshrined belief that it does so. It has practically become a kind of litmus test of one’s social propriety. But the polygraph test detects and measures stress — not lies. To persist in calling it a “lie detector test” is just plain stupid. But as a myth of modern society, it contributes to easy litigation and an easy conscience.
Judging by the place the polygraph occupies in police investigations reported in the media and its frequent appearance in entertainment dramatizations of police work, it seems an object example of the faith the common man in the American street places in technology. The polygraph test and electric chair may be as much icons of American culture as the Coca-Cola bottle, Marilyn Monroe, Uncle Sam and G.I. Joe. But I prefer not to believe in it wholeheartedly and, regardless of his reasons for declining to undergo the test, I admire McCann.