wrote on Jan 16^th, 2003 at 8:37am:

Marty, I'm sorry for not knowing all there is to know about this subject, But I never really found a need to know it before... But what I do know is, "I should never have to lie to prove i'm telling the ttruth!"

Man! I can relate to that!  First, don't feel bad for the polygraphers. For the most part they do the best they can. The problem here is that there is so much variability in the way people respond to questions that what the polygraphers have come up with is an odd sort of compromise.

They basically try to get you to not only lie about something unimportant, but feel bad about it. The presumption is that your response to this lie will give them an idea about whether you are lying about what they are really testing for. That may be whether a person has murdered a girl, or it may be whether someone has smoked more pot than they think reasonable. (kinda hard to believe the response would be similar!)

So what it comes down to is that polygraphers utilize a certain amount of deception in order to elicit and determine the truth of what an examinee says.  It's imperfect. error prone, sometimes degrading, but it actually seems to work to some degree.  However, in working, it sometimes is the most inaccurate with a trully honest persons such as you appear to be.

Don't feel bad. For some bizarre reasons this has captured my attention. I am an EE with some interest in the technologies involved and also some desire to see the polygraph used resposnisbly - or not at all.  I really hate to see the innocent pilloried and the polygraph has a certain propensity to do so even though I believe it has some value for specific incident testing.

-Marty