wrote on Jun 30^th, 2002 at 7:46pm:

I have a question.  You mention that the purpose of this site is to help truthful people pass the test, but you also concede you may be assisting guilty people to do the same.  Let's suppose there is someone out there reading your recommendations, and he is guilty of murder or a violent crime.  He reads your recommendations and avoids being caught because of the countermeasures you are teaching him.  Do you give this any consideration at all?

Nicole,
You raise an excellent question, and for me the answer is twofold.

The first part involves the basic principle of innocence until proof of guilt: it is better that the guilty go free than the innocent should be punished.  The Control-Question Test polygraph not only indicates guilt in innocent people far too often; it also contains a built-in bias against truthful, guilt-free people, as they will refuse to lie on the control questions (or simply don't have much to feel bad about on them).

The second reason is an extension of the first: based both upon empirical research and upon the expert opinion of scientists who study relevant fields, the polygraph (as it is commonly used in the Control-Question Test) is a notoriously poor way to determine innocence or guilt.  So much so, that the results are not even allowed in the Court.  Thus, reliance upon it in the first place is IMHO a bad idea, and may serve to mislead investigators (or worse, serve as a substitute when actual investigative work would have solved the case).

In other words, I would not want the guilty to go free as a result of being able to fool a polygraph (as George indicated, knowledge of how to do this has been around long before this web site).  But I also think it shouldn't even be an option.

Skeptic