Gordon,

How could answering the following question I put to you conceivably undermine national security in any way?!


Quote:

...if you would use the relevant/irrelevant format with sophisticated subjects (i.e., those who understand the polygraph procedure), then on what scientific basis do you expect to be able to distinguish truth from deception using this (thoroughly discredited) technique? For the informed, truthful subject who heeds your advice and does not employ countermeasures but instead admits to his/her knowledge of the trickery on which "control" question "test" polygraphy depends, the promise of being treated to a relevant/irrelevant "test" instead is hardly reassuring.

Is even the theoretical basis of the Relevant/Irrelevant technique a state secret?!

The former head of the National Security Agency's polygraph program, the late Raymond J. Weir, Jr., has described the technique in detail in two articles published in the American Polygraph Association quarterly, Polygraph ("In Defense of the Relevant-Irrelevant Polygraph Test," Vol. 3 [1974], No. 2, pp. 119-166 and "Some Principles of Question Selection and Sequencing for Relevant-Irrelevant Testing," Vol. 5 [1976], No. 3, pp. 207-222). For more than 25 years, these rather detailed articles describing the R/I technique then (and perhaps still) used by NSA have been readily available for review by any foreign intelligence service that might be interested in penetrating the NSA. But the retired head of the NSA polygraph program (and Polygraph's then editor, Norm Ansley, who was also at NSA) didn't seem to think that publication of these articles would harm national security.

When you, allegedly at the request of a government agency that you decline to name, assert that you cannot explain why the polygraph subject who admits to his polygrapher that he  understands how the "Control" Question "Test" works (and doesn't) should have any confidence whatsoever in the Relevant/Irrelevant technique, then either you, the un-named agency, or both are being intellectually dishonest.

And how could answering the following question undermine national securtity in any conceivable way?


Quote:

Can anyone in the polygraph community cite any peer-reviewed study whatsoever indicating that the Relevant/Irrelevant (R/I) technique works any better than a coin flip, a Magic 8-Ball, or a ouija board (i.e., chance)?!

Why not just cite the research, or take the intellectually honest approach and acknowledge the obvious: there is none!