Q COSTA RICA reports that the country’s Attorney General, Carlo Díaz, is unwilling to submit to polygraph screening conducted by a private company, as Costa Rica’s new president, Laura Fernández, is requiring of members of her “Fuerza Élite” (Elite Force). As previously reported by the Tico Times, polygraph screening of senior government officials is being conducted in coordination with a private company called the “International Polygraph Study Center.”
However, Díaz fails to understand that polygraph “testing” is not to be relied upon under any circumstances and instead reportedly states that he would only trust a polygraph “test” conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States!
Attorney General Díaz should know that the FBI’s late top scientific expert on polygraphy, Dr. Drew Richardson, was strongly opposed to polygraph screening, recognizing it to be without theoretical foundation and completely invalid. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Committee to Review the Evidence on the Polygraph reached a similar conclusion and advised against the use of polygraph screening by federal agencies in the United States.
Costa Rica should learn from the United States’ folly in continuing to rely on polygraph screening, and not emulate it.