I have made a few entry's on here about my most recent experience with the polygraph and the hell it has put me through.  However, I would like to prove my point even further.  This was not the first poly I had taken.  In 2001 I was given a poly as part of the hiring process for our local sheriffs department.  I was applying for a corrections posisition.  While taking that polygraph the examiner told me that I was showing deception about being terminated from other employers.  I had told him I had been fired once before and that was it.  I was telling the truth.  The thing is this examiner was an officer himself.  He had done my background check which I passed with ease(not even a speeding ticket) and I finished second in my class over all.  He told me that he felt that I would be a real asset to the department so he really needed to help me pass that question so I would be hired.  I think he reworded the question about 4 or 5 different ways before it finally gave him a satisfactory result.  If he could affect my results that dramatically for the better, than it could also be done for the negative.  That in my opinion is no "test" that anyone should trust their freedom or their career to.  This is a true life story.  No agenda and no propeganda!  It is the FACTS!

LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Nov 18^th, 2006 at 12:36am:


Semantics deals with the meanings of words.  I've never understood why people denigrate semantics.  How is it possible to have a meaningful conversation if the participants don't agree upon (or even care) what the meanings of the words they use are?

Wasn’t George’s entire point that “detect a lie” and “detection of deception” are essentially semantically equivalent and therefore one must either believe the polygraph is capable of both or neither?

George,

It seems our polygrapher friends cannot distinguish between detection and inference...

In a polygraph, they're detecting changes in physiological responses and inferring that it's due to deception...

They can't seem to understand that we antipolygraph folk believe that the polygraph actually detects changes in physiological responses. It's the inference that the response is solely due to deception where we have the problem...

I'll sit back and wait for the ad hominem attacks and misdirection to start once again...

Regards, 

digithead

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"Zigs and zags," to a polygrapher, can be just as much a preponderance of the evidence as bloody knives, blood-stained bedrooms, and lifeless bodies are to a detective.  Perhaps a better analogy would be DNA, carpet fibers, hair analysis, fingerprints, and other "CSI" forms of evidence.  None of these techniques is 100% accurate, but if they are found at the above scene, a preponderance of the evidence might lead one to place blame where blame is due.

Here are your questions (italics mine): "If you agree that the polygraph doesn't detect lies, then isn't it dishonest to turn around and in the next breath speak of polygraphy as being the "psychophysiological detection of deception?" What is the practical difference between detecting lies and detecting deception?"

To answer this question, it is necessary that I first explain what I believe "detect" should mean when applied to the polygraph.  I  have done that.  Your second question is simply a matter of semantics.  Therefore, you see, I have answered both, and done so with colorful analogies that I hope the reader will enjoy.   

George,

I would suggest that the recording of psychophysiological data allows for the inference (not the detection) of deception, however implausible the basis for that inference is.  I would not object to Psychophysiological Inference of Detection (PID), which then could be more appropriately evaluated in terms of what has really transpired.  Needless to say, there is a big difference between this type of inference and the ready conclusions drawn from personal observation cited in LieBabyCryBaby's last example.
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It seems to me that the zigs and zags of polygraph charts are qualitatively different from bloody knives, blood-stained bedrooms, and lifeless bodies at the bottom of staircases. Nor does it seem to me that you have substantively addressed the question I posed in starting this message thread.

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Must you be so pedantic, George?  I made a "funny," and it seemed to fly right over your head.

I see that my "rising" analogy was above you.     So, here's a more mundane one: If I walk into an upstairs bedroom and I see blood on a knife and blood on the bed and floor, and the room shows all the evidence of a struggle, and then I walk downstairs and find a body with stab wounds in the kitchen, the preponderance of the evidence would suggest that a crime has been committed.  One might argue that perhaps the suspected victim stabbed himself a few times while stumbling around the bedroom, and then stumbled downstairs before finally succumbing to his wounds, but the preponderance of the evidence would strongly suggest otherwise.  Think about this analogy, and maybe you'll understand what I think the word "detect" should mean when applied to the question "Can the polygraph detect deception?"

I use the word "detect" in the sense of Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, 2: to discover or determine the existence, presence, or fact of <~ alcohol in the blood>.

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What, exactly, do you mean by the word "detect"?   

Would you then not agree that the polygrapher who in one breath acknowledges that the polygraph cannot detect lies and in the next insists that polygraphy is a valid technique for the detection of deception speaks with a forked tongue?

Can the polygraph detect a lie?  Can a woman detect whether a man is attracted to her?  A rise here or there in the right place at the right time can give her at least a preponderance of the evidence.

As for the difference between detecting a lie and detecting deception, that's simply a matter of semantics.

A question for polygraph examiners:

It seems that most polygraphers will readily admit that the polygraph cannot actually detect a lie. If you agree that the polygraph doesn't detect lies, then isn't it dishonest to turn around and in the next breath speak of polygraphy as being the "psychophysiological detection of deception?" What is the practical difference between detecting lies and detecting deception?