Now there's a clear connection between "Sosa-gate" and polygraphy...

http://badjocks.com/

$25K to his favorite charity if he passes.

Chris,

Your analogy between corked bats in baseball and countermeasures in polygraphy raises some interesting questions, but also has severe limitations. Baseball and polygraphy, as well as corked bats and countermeasures, differ in several fundamental ways:

1) Baseball is a game. Polygraphy, on the other hand, is a pseudoscience that its practitioners falsely represent to be a diagnostic test for the detection of deception.

2) Baseball offers a level playing field. Polygraphy has an inherent bias against the truthful.

3) In baseball, umpires are presumably evaluated on their ability to objectively make correct calls. In contrast, many polygraphers are rated on their success in obtaining confessions/admissions. Thus, the latter have a stake in the outcome.

4) Corked bats can be detected by techniques such as X-ray inspection. By contrast, no polygrapher has ever demonstrated any ability to detect countermeasures.

The polygraph community certainly does prefer to sweep the issue of countermeasures, and its inability to detect them, under the rug. We saw this with the National Academy of Sciences' polygraph review, where panel members were at first told that there were countermeasure studies classified at the secret level that were relevant to their work. When panel members obtained the appropriate security clearances and sought access to these studies, DoDPI and the CIA told them that no such completed studies existed at the secret level.

Is such head-in-the-sand game playing in the national interest? Hell no. But it is in the interest of those government officials who have foolishly staked their professional reputations on the pseudoscience of polygraphy.

All, 

I will be away from a computer for a while, so this will be my farewell post until I get myself settled and my PC back online.

I think the Scam-my So-so (Sammy Sosa for you non-baseball types) scandal equates well to countermeasures.  The underlying issue in both arguments is cheating.   

So I think pro and anti poly types should sit back and watch the criticism unfold, taking into account that in Scam-my's case, we are only talking about baseball, but with countermeasures, we are talking about national security.

Similarities in the stories:

We know he used it once, how many times has he done it before?  (am I talking about a corked bat or countermeasures?)

Do it and get caught, and you pay the consequences.

If he has done it, and been getting away with it for so long, how many others have done it, are doing it, or will continue to do it?

How can we find a better way to catch people who do this?


Really, the issue is cheating.  Look at the uproar Scam-my So-so has created by getting caught.  This is baseball?  Why is it that the problem of cheating on polygraphs is so much worse on a national security issue, and no once cares?  Baffling . . . .

I think the government would rather hide the dirty laundry (polygraph and countermeasures) under a rug than hang this issue out on a line.

Take care all, 

Chris