AntiPolygraph.org Message Board

In a refreshing change, a spokesman for the American Polygraph Association (APA) has revealed to a reporter how truth versus deception is actually inferred in a polygraph "test." In an interview with Palm Beach Post reporter Ron Wiggins, APA director Dan Sosnowski, who served as press liaison during the association's 39th annual conference held 1-6 August 2004 in Orlando, Florida, divulged the "secret" of the probable-lie "control" questions. It has long been the standard practice of polygraphers to mislead reporters (and the public in general) into believing that the irrelevant questions are used as the basis of comparison. I would like to think that AntiPolygraph.org's efforts in making the truth about polygraphs public may have helped encourage the APA to finally come clean.

Now that the APA has publicly acknowledged the trickery behind the "control" questions, perhaps it would care to publicly state how polygraph examiners are to handle subjects who admit to knowing the trick. Four years ago, when I put this question to then APA president Milton O. ("Skip") Webb, he declined to answer. Sad

Wiggins' article, titled "Polygraph: Top 'bad cop' or 'baloney'?," is cited here in full:

Quote:

Polygraph: Top 'bad cop' or 'baloney'?
By Ron Wiggins
Wednesday, August 18, 2004

ron_wiggins@pbpost.com -- Until a lie detector can actually cause a liar's pants to ignite, should we pay the least attention when public figures brandish self-sponsored polygraph exam results to flaunt their credibility?

Or should we whack all parties with a rubber hose and send them back to their jobs?

Truth is tough to measure. Just ask the people who try to do it for a living.

Two weeks ago, 550 polygraph operators met in Orlando for the American Polygraph Association convention.

Dan Sosnowski, press liaison for the group, obliged with a short course in the science and art of polygraph.

Students of human behavior, he said, have long suspected that truth suppression is only poker face-deep and that the body will always trip itself up in ways that dependably show up as jiggles and spikes on a line graph.

"Probably the first lie detection device was a bucket of water," Sosnowski said.

Way, way back

In the late 1800s, Italian criminologist and physician Cesare Lombroso theorized that when a person lied, changes in blood pressure would give him away, and if he placed his hand in a bucket of water, telltale ripples would result. In 1895, Lombroso expanded his concept, constructing a single-line graph based on blood pressure.

By the 1920s, polygraph machines were patented to record changes in breathing, sweating (measured by electrical conductivity), heart rate and blood pressure during questioning. The machines do that to perfection. The question is whether those zig-zaggy lines from an anxious suspect can be interpreted with any degree of certainty.

Whether bogus science or clever psychology, few would deny that polygraph examinations have proven helpful in sticky investigations.

"The polygraph is an investigative tool," Sosnowski said. "It is both science and art."

He believes that a seasoned operator can detect deception 90 to 95 percent of the time, not a batting average for sending folks to the electric chair, but -- if true -- helpful to government agencies screening out drug users, businesses ferreting out thieving employees and crime investigators eliminating suspects on a long list.

Sosnowski said that during his years as a polygraph operator for the Chicago Police Department, "we were able to put suspects on the back burner -- not clear them, but allow detectives to focus their efforts more productively."

Where police abuse has been alleged, investigators tend to take seriously complainants willing to take a polygraph.

Many times, the spokesman said, a felon will submit to a polygraph, and once wired to the machine, heave a weary sigh, and say: "OK. You really want to know what happened? Here it is."

Then sing like a canary.

So, if a polygraph exam is that intimidating to a hardened felon, pity the company employee forced to sweat out a polygraph where serious wrongdoing is alleged. Is this not emotional rape? Some of us would soak our socks with sweat if accused of taking so much as a box of Bics. Wouldn't one's heart rate, blood pressure and breathing spike at the very idea of questioning under duress?

Maybe, Sosnowski said, but forget TV polygraphs and hear him out.

How it works: Flight or fight

Examiners can't get much out of a subject so stressed that he's on the verge of spontaneous combustion before questioning even starts.

To achieve interpretable results, the subject needs to be calmed down and reassured, and even shown every question in the pre-interview. You've got to understand the process and the theory of why a person's body will rat you out if you attempt to lie.

"The foundation of polygraph examination is flight or fight," the spokesman said. The art of the operator is in convincing the subject that truth is his only out and that, if he lies, the machine will see right into his wicked little soul and rat him out.

Two tubes are strapped across chest and stomach to record changes in breathing. A cardiograph is taken, along with blood pressure. Metal clamps are applied to the hand to measure electrical conductivity between fingers. The more you sweat, the higher your conductivity reading.

Now we get into art. Also duplicity.

In order to try to establish whether you are telling the truth or lying, all those squibs and jiggles and peaks and valleys on the four graphs (hence polygraph) cannot mean anything unless you tell a small lie in the early going. You have to be tricked into lying. First you are reminded of what your mother taught you, that lying is a bad thing and that, if you lie, you are in world of trouble.

"When we ask the money question -- did you steal the $50,000 from the bank? -- we gauge your response to a control lie," Sosnowski said.

Huh? What lie?

"Most people think when we ask if your name is Bob or if your age is 35 or if today is Tuesday, that we are asking the control questions. We're not. The control question would be something like, 'Have you ever stolen anything as an adult, or have you, in the last few years, told a lie to stay out of trouble?' "

The presumption here is that, when it comes to shaving truth or telling a whopper to stay out of trouble, we are all lying weasels. To quote the fictional Gov. Willie Stark from Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption. He passeth from the stink of the diaper to the stench of the shroud." There is always something we are ashamed of, and we will lie when pressed.

And when the polygraph operator presses, we have the fight or flight response. You can do neither. So you lie.

Now, the polygraph operator watches the lines jump on the graph paper and pencils in "pathetic lying weasel" by this control question. Later, when you are asked whether you stole the $50,000 or dismembered the old guy in the wheelchair, you will have a lesser reaction. If you are not involved.

And if you're hiding something, the lines will be just like the lines on the setup lie, only more obvious. Or so polygraph theory goes.

In which case, the operator shakes his head sadly and writes, "major lying weasel."

And now you will be leaned on hard. "So where did you hide the body?"

Professional liars vs. the machine

Sociopaths and career criminals, folks who don't know right from wrong, don't care a fig about lying. They lie for practice. But they don't fool the machine, says Sosnowski. It's the fear of getting caught that the machine picks up when they lie.

"Fight or flight," he repeats.

Then, of course, some test-takers react emotionally to practically everything asked, and others hardly flick the needle. What then?

"The analyst reports 'inconclusive,' " Sosnowski said.

And much reporting there must be. About 550 polygraph operators attended the APA meeting in Orlando, and the press liaison estimated that there are about 20,000 operators in the United States. Those certified by the APA were required to complete eight weeks of classroom study plus two weeks of correspondence follow-up. Polygraph tests take at least 1 1/2 hours and as long as 3 1/2 hours, and they can cost from $150 to $500.

Flip side: 'Polygraph technology is baloney'

Yet many critics say "humbug" to the tests.

As recently as 2003, The National Academies reported that the polygraph at best is "an imperfect instrument."

In 1985, Dr. Leonard Saxe of Brandeis University, reporting to the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, concluded that "substantial numbers of both truthful and deceptive individuals may be misidentified through use of polygraph tests."

Other studies seem to indicate that polygraph tests work better on subjects who believe in them. The tests proved meaningless on subjects who thought the tests were silly.

Now hear from Doug Williams, 58, of Norman, Okla., a former police polygraph operator who came to loathe polygraph exams. Williams quit, and in 1979 hit the road, becoming a one-man lobby in support of the Employee Polygraph Protection Act, which became law in 1988. Job applicants can no longer be screened by polygraph for non-government jobs, nor can an employee be required to take a polygraph except in cases of financial loss.

Williams, a former evangelist and the author of Sting the Polygraph (available at www.polygraph.com), can still work up a righteous sweat when you call and ask what got him sideways with his former occupation.

"The polygraph is a good tool for getting a confession. That doesn't make the technology valid. You can't have your lawyer there! I had a guy come back 17 times. The polygraph machine is the bad cop, the operator the good cop. They got these tubes and wires coming off you, that blood pressure cuff pumped up, hurting like hell 15 minutes at a time.
"And they keep coming back at you, let you stew 20 minutes and come back again.
Before we got that 1988 law, you had stores like Eckerds polygraphing 42 applicants to hire three cashiers. I decided a long time ago that no 16-year-old kid should have to go through a polygraph exam to work as a cashier at a 7-Eleven.

"I got a belly full. I didn't like what I had become. I chucked it and hitchhiked to Washington, D.C., and was an expert witness at committee hearings. Now you look at all those FBI spies and secrets missing from Los Alamos, all by people who passed polygraph tests. If law enforcement wants to use polygraphs to harass child molesters, let 'em do it. You can't hardly do too much to molesters, but it doesn't change the fact:

"Polygraph technology is baloney, and polygraph operators know it."

That's harsh. The American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association have taken a milder position that is no less an indictment: polygraph interrogations yield about a 50/50 chance of success.

So, if we go with that, politicians who hook up to polygraph machines are telling the truth at least half the time.

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