Sad, sad, sad.  It is a lot of training for not a lot of pay, while dealing with a lot of ignorant people.  Kind of like being a high school teacher.   

  I still think 560 clock hours is no where near enough, polygraph school should be Masters Degree level meaning 120 credit hours for the Bachelors degree and another 35 hours or so for the Masters. After that at least 200 real tests as an apprentice with a seasoned examiner, having complete oversight to toss out the exam if it was incorrect.

Most people with that level of Education will not want to work for what an examiner makes. Kentucky State Police polygraph examiner makes $30,000.00 a year sorry no thanks for me, they have mostly old retired police or military people that really don’t care.  The professionalism is just not there, I also meet a couple from Tenn same thing for them. I hope they are not the same every where. The ones I have ran across would rather tell war stories than work. I maybe the same 20 years from now, I may be missing some thing as I have only been an LEo for ten years.

This is off the Kentucky Personal cabinet wesite check it out at http://personnel.ky.gov/2400cs/2433.doc

COMMONWEALTH OF KENTUCKY
CLASS SPECIFICATION

CLASS TITLE:  POLYGRAPH EXAMINER II
TITLE CODE:  2433      GROUP:  AUXILIARY LAW ENFORCEMENT
SELECTION METHOD:  100% QUAL      REV. 08-01
NO. OF TEST QUESTIONS:  
SELECTION ID:  5269     SALARY:  (MIN-MID)  $2470.50 - $2980.00  GRADE:  13
SPECIAL ENTRANCE RATE:  No
POSITIONS IN THIS CLASS GENERALLY REPORT TO:  POLYGRAPH SUPERVISOR
PRIMARY USER AGENCY:  DEPARTMENT OF STATE POLICE

Yes, it's a lot of training, Dimas, especially at the Federal level, where they get 14-15 weeks of training, including conducting polygraphs on mock crimes in a lab setting every day.

Of course, training alone will not make a good polygrapher.  That's like taking 60 hours of Spanish credit--unless you are immersed in the language and using it in a real-world setting, you'll never really become proficient.

Actually, running a polygraph machine is NOT that easy.   There are a lot of things to be looking at and making sure of before, during and after each question.  After awhile, it's like driving a car, but just think about how you were the first time your daddy or the drivers ed instructor let you get behind the wheel.

All that training and they still can't figure out the truth, you tell me.

LOL, at least no one has yet suggested sticking a tampon in their sphincter to foil the test.  I think the day that happens I will really lose my faith in humanity.

Then again if you work in LE long enough  you are bound to see it all, so who knows.

Quote:


320-400hrs of training is a joke?  It really is not that complex to run the polygraph or learn how to interview people.  If anything they have made it that long to add credibility to their trade.

Heck, in most states EMT's need only 120 classroom hours and 20 clinical hours to run an ambulance and their job is SAVING lives and dealing with the plethora of human conditions out there.  So in reality a polygrapher receives 3 times the training an EMT does and you think it isn't enough?

  That's a good one.  Just make sure you use the little tape strips properly, or it'll be painful when you pull out those pubic hairs!

Strap on a thick kotex pad and slowly apply the squeeze. That will foil the seat sensor.

PG111,

What exactly did you mean by "I now know that if you give them everything on controls you will fail. "

Oh, I've seen them, George, and I've tested them on myself and others.  They DO work, and very well.  Have a nice vacation.

Although the manufacturers of various sensor pads claim that they are effective at detecting such countermeasures as the anal sphincter contraction, there are no published studies documenting the validity of such claims. Nonetheless, I would not dismiss out of hand the possibility that they may work better than chance. If I were going to employ countermeasures and saw that such a pad was present, I would avoid the anal sphincter contraction. (My first choice, in any event, would be mental countermeasures.)

PD521 wrote on Feb 8^th, 2005 at 7:32pm:

I have a question if polygraph is 97% accurate what happens to the 3 that are wrongly accused or released. How does the inconclusive results figure in.
   
  Polygraphist claim that accuracy rates are as high as 97% but that rules out inconclusive results that are obtained 15-25% of the time. Inconclusive is an error or an inaccuracy if you can not make an opinion then it should be considered inaccurate.

  Lets see out of 100 people tested here is my question.

Say 40 were (DI) deception indicated
       40 were (NDI) no deception indicated
       20 were inconclusive how do you figure that is anywhere near the average   accuracy claims that were posted. 

If that's the best you can do, you really SHOULDN'T reply, Jeffrey!  Your comments about polygraphsters are funny, but tiresome.

Quote:


Perhaps because as a polygraphster, you enjoy finding like-minded fraudsters at sex and gambling forums.  Feel more at home there?

(At the risk of carrying on this side-tracking conversation, consider this my last reply to Mr. Anal.)

Best of luck in your polygraph career, PG.  Now, here's my response, and thank heavens for cut and paste! 

(By the way, this is NOT the best forum I've been on.  Too many bitchers, moaners, whiners and worriers here for my taste.  I find online gaming community, singles chat rooms and sex forums much better, but that's just me.  Like some of those websites, this website should come with a disclaimer banner that reads "For Entertainment Purposes Only.")
 
Here is a reply I just sent to one of your most distinguished (or should I say extinguished) senior members, Gino Scalabrini: 
 
OK, Gino.  Although this will probably just lead to both of us citing studies and articles that none of the worriers on this forum will actually read, I'll humor you . . . at least once.  We'll look like two people arguing over the true meaning of an obscure Biblical passage.      
 
In 1983, the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress selected 10 field studies they believed had scientific merit.  The overall accuracy of the polygraph decisions was 90% on criterion-guilty suspects and 80%  on criterion-innocent suspects (Lykken, D.T. (1997) The detection of deception.  Psychological Bulletin , 86, 47-53).  
 
Pretty darned good, huh, Gino?  It gets better, so read on:  
 
In 1997, the Committee of Concerned Social Scientists found four significant field studies that showed the average accuracy of field decisions for the CQT (comparison question test) was 90.5%.  It is signficant, though, that nearly all of the errors made by the CQT were false positive errors.  (Still, when you're dealing with accuracy over 90%, don't place too much emphasis on those FP's--besides, it just gets better after this, Gino.)  In the four studies, the data was derived from independent evaluations of the physiological data (the raw charts).   Because it is usually the original examiners who testify in court, and because they obviously make the decisions on how to proceed in their exams, the Committee went further in an effort to ascertain their accuracy compared to that of the independent examiners.  The Committee also included an additional two studies in this evaluation.  What they found was that the original examiners were even more accurate than the independent examiners.  In fact, the mean acccuracy for the innocent was 98%, while the mean accuracy for the guilty was 97%.  The studies used by the Committee are as follows:  
 
Horvath, F.S. (1977)  The effect of selected variables on interpretation of polygraph records. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 127-136.  
 
Honts, C.R. and Raskin, D.C. (1988) A field study of the validity of the directed lie control question. Journal of Police Science and Administration, 16, 56-61.  
 
Kleinmuntz, B. and Szucko, J. (1984) A field study of the fallibility of polygraphic lie detection.  Nature, 308, 449-450.  
 
Raskin, D.C., Kircher, J.C., Honts, C.R. and Horowitz, S.W.(1988) A Study of the Validity of Polygraph Examinations in Criminal Investigation, Grant No. 85-IJ-CX-0040.  Salt Lake City: Department of Psychology, University of Utah.  
 
Patrick, C.J. and Iacano, W.G. (1991) Validity of the control question polygraph test: The problem of sampling bias.  Journal of Applied Psychology, 76, 229-238.  
 
Honts, C.R. (1996) Criterion development and validity of the control question test in field application.  The Journal of General Psychology, 123, 309-324.  
 
So much for your crystal ball/tarot card/flip of the coin analogies, huh, Gino?  
 
(By the way, those two sunglassed smilies in the dates of one Honts and one Raskin reference should be 1988--your forum has a problem with the number one thousand nine hundred and eighty-eight--it shows the last eight as a smiley--weird!)  
 
 
Go ahead and come back with some more referenced studies that the worried boys and girls on this forum won't ever read.  This is more for you and me, Gino, just so you and I both know that I know what I'm talking about.  The difference between you and me, though, is that all you can do is counter with your own citations, while I have real-world experience and have rubbed elbows with the Top Guns of the polygraph world.  Take your best shot, Gino.  I probably won't waste so much time to counter your inane, memorized rhetoric again, so rest easy, baby!  
 
Oh, where, oh where has my little George gone, oh where, oh where can he be?  He'll be back, of course. This ridiculous forum is his whole life.  He's not much good for anything but entertainment, though.

Anal Sphincter said
(Actually, two years to get a Masters Degree in psychology is a joke)

Two years to get my Masters was not that bad considering the fact I was working full time and going to school at night. Who said it was psychology degree. If I had the funds I would go for a PHD but that would take maybe 4 years and a lot more money than I have to spend. 

Please DODPI masters level, now that makes me laugh real hard, your going to have to stop it. 
Thanks Anal Sphincter

  I am very much willing to debate Polygraph anytime love the subject.
   
  I actually may go to polygraph school, and get my license its just 6 weeks in Kentucky, with a short internship.

PG111 wrote on Feb 11^th, 2005 at 8:04pm:


Actually, two years to get a Masters Degree in psychology is a joke, too, at least if you plan on teaching with it.  It's not good for much else, is it?  You are right about one thing, though: 8-10 weeks isn't enough to make anyone a great "polygraphist"  (thanks for making me laugh, man).  Of course, the Feds go to school a lot longer, and all their courses are Masters-level courses, but that still doesn't make them an expert polygrapher.  I once asked a very experienced polygrapher how long it took him to become so proficient and confident in his job, and he told me two or three years.   It's like any other serious profession, I'm sure.

If you have as much knowledge about the polygraph as you say you do, then shouldn't you realize that the more you know about polygraph the more you'll play with your own head and the more difficult it will be to pass the exam?  Several experienced polygraphers have told me that they are "ruined" for the polygraph because they know too much about it.  If that's true, then no wonder you had a difficult time.  It would also support my belief that this forum does a disservice to the scared little boys and girls who come here by making them play too much with their own heads, when they would otherwise have passed the polygraph with flying colors.

Oh, and I'm almost positive that you were being grilled just to see what you'd reveal.  Some agencies or departments want to grab any opportunity they can get to see what you're made of and what baggage you are carrying. 

 
   No skeletons in my closet, led a pretty much boring life let me guess AnalSphincter your a polygraph examiner with a Bachelor or Masters degree. Well the first examiner, I dealt with had a Bachelors degree from Stanford or at least that’s what he said anyhow, the second I don’t know his education level. You may very well be correct that it was inconclusive and he just said that to get a confession to whatever he thought was causing a reaction. The subject of my thesis, for my Masters Degree was Polygraph; I spent almost two years and many hours researching the subject. I can speak on the subject with confidence and with more related knowledge than most licensed examiners I have had the chance to meet. 8-10 weeks to be a polygraphist is a joke, as you most likely already know.

It would be interesting to know the educational backgrounds of the examiner(s) who administered the tests you failed.  Also, when you say "failed," are you possibly talking about inconclusive results rather than flat-out failure?  It takes a lot to flat-out fail a polygraph because the numerical analysis used gives even the guilty quite a buffer before assigning a deceptive result.  There is no clear-cut pass/fail line--you have some comfortable breathing space that is called inconclusive.  Unless your examiner(s) were poorly trained, poorly inspected idiots (and there are idiots in every profession), I would be more inclined to believe that there are some real skeletons in your closet with regard to the relevant questions than that you innocently responded off the chart on those questions.

PD521 is gone; I had to re-register lost my password.

I failed two polygraph (false positives) test given by two examiners that said I was lying on pre employment test. I was told to be completely honest on all questions, I did just that. 
  I never lied in the least on Irrelevant, Relevant or Controls. I learned the truth about the BS behind these test and have passed 5 since. I now know that if you give them everything on controls you will fail. 
  So Anal Sphincter does that answer your question. 

George you’re the man, keep up the good work. 1st amendment rules; even when polygraph examiners read this site, its there right to give there 2 cents even though they are wrong most of the time.

PD521 wrote on Feb 8^th, 2005 at 7:32pm:


So, when you say you used countermeasures and they worked, are you admitting that you were lying to the "relevant" questions and overcame your lies by countermeasures?  If so, which "relevant" questions did you lie to?  I'm curious.  I know, this is a no-win question for you: Either you were NOT lying to the "relevant" questions and you used countermeasures for no good reason other than your fear of a possible false positive (which would not prove they worked since you were actually not lying to the "relevant" questions) OR you used countermeasures to get through an exam you didn't deserve to pass, which, if the countermeasures you learned on this site actually worked, would make Antipolygraph.org complicit in providing bad people with a way to escape detection.

it is not easy to see if you practice, and I have yet to have an examiner face him so how could he tell if you are biting your tongue? I prefered it over the anal spincter and it worked like a charm.....

I’m amazed that after reading this site for some time no one has any real advice on this subject. The tongue biting method is easy to detect or see. The examiner told me on another test that I swallowed when I was truly attempting the biting method. I have taken 7 total tests.  5 passed after learning countermeasures so I know they work, just want some help with that damn chair pad.

try using the "tongue bitng technique" talked about in TLBTLD......

Anti-Counter measures pad has anyone had any experience with them, looking on the polygraph manufactures websites these things can detect heart beats when set to high levels detection.

If this is true the anal sphincter muscle can’t be constricted can it? 

Doug’s book says the only way it can be detected is if they insert it, which is hard to believe if it can detect your heart beat. 

I have used the anal sphincter muscle method and passed with flying colors in past tests, but the agency I'm looking to move too uses the anti counter measures pad in the seat and has them on the floor to put your feet on. 

Any one used counter measures and passed with these things in place.

I have a friend who is an examiner in a neighboring town says they can’t be beat. Is he right, needing help. He does not have the pad or I could try it on his. I proved to him that the counter measures worked he still is in disbelief over it.