Darkcobra,
Part I response (Part II will follow when I return from travel.)
You are correct. This exam was of the "Did you do it?", "Did you do it uh huh?" variety of (tri-) ZCT (two relevants related to touching the vagina of the young female in question (the phrase "bare vagina" used in the latter of the two) and a third question regarding touching any child in a sexual manner).
You write:
Quote:
...It is my opinion that the pretest interview is extremely important in presenting the questions and the examiner must be totally unbiased and present him/herself in that manner....
I assume then that you would agree with me that it would be inappropriate for the examiner to be a participant in pre-polygraph initial (non-polygraph) investigative interviews of the victim in which such bias might develop, yes?
You further write:
Quote:
...I do not suggest that any polygraph examination should be admissible in court, nor would I suggest that any person should be assumed guilty as a result of a polygrpah examination, it is simply a tool for investigative purposes....
Then I would assume that you would also agree with me that it would ALWAYS be improper for law enforcement/prosecution (or the defense for that matter) to seek a stipulated exam whose results would be admitted into trial testimony/evidence, yes?
Your further write:
Quote:
...I would be of the opinion that an innocent person would be very focused on the relevant questions, the consequence is prison and loss of any respect from the community at large. The consequence for the control must be of the same intensity. That is the problem with the pretest and making a control have the same weight to the innocent as the relevant. It would be difficult, not impossible....
In this passage you make 4 statements. In order they are:
(1) "I would be of the opinion that an innocent person would be very focused on the relevant questions, the consequence is prison and loss of any respect from the community at large." TRUE and a statement whose significance can not be overstated and which can not be dwelled on for too long a period of time.
(2) "The consequence for the control must be of the same intensity." TRUE as far as it goes. Not only must the intensity (emotional content) be equivalent, but also the nature/type of question must be indistinguishable from the relevant. Not going to happen.
(3) "That is the problem with the pretest and making a control have the same weight to the innocent as the relevant." Same as before-not going to happen.
(4) "It would be difficult, not impossible." IT IS SO NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE AND THEREFORE SO UNTRUSWORTHY AS TO NEVER BE A VIABLE TECHNIQUE. But for the sake of conversation, let's say it's not completely impossible. I will suggest that any degree of success with your efforts (at setting comparison questions) to make it possible is completely unverifiable. You can watch videotapes all day long of your performance, but you have no idea what is going through the mind of the examinee, and to continue (with the procedure and in-test phase) you have to ASSUME the most unreasonable of outcome(s) to proceed, i.e., that the examinee doesn't recognize relevant questions or is impacted by their clearly greater significance. And so we have arrived at the crux of this discussion. You have no idea what impact your comparison questions have. Perhaps they have some (not likely in this case), perhaps they don't. You just don't know. As a drug chemist when I add an internal standard to my assay, I know exactly what it is doing and how it behaves in my experiment. You do not have any similar control with you experiment and therefore have no scientific control whatsoever. Some years ago when members of your community decided to no longer refer to "control questions" but to "comparison questions", that was in response to a cry for honesty. That being said, your community is no less responsible for scientific control now that it has removed the word from your nomenclature. Best till later and thanks for your reply...
