wrote on Jan 15^th, 2003 at 5:27am:

Even a broken clock is right twice each day. A single anecdote provides hardly a large enough sample size to declare polygraphy reliable.

It is generally agreed that the polygraph's greatest reliability is in specific incident testing with a naive suspect. We have that in spades here. Even more to the point, we have a control question from interviewing others that is very specific to Westerfield. That reduces the false positive likelihood from exceptionally honest individuals. Still, it's too bad that CQT testing is so ingrained that SDPD missed a great opportunity to do a GKT on Westerfield. (specifics of the home interior, girl's bedroom, etc).  Perhaps he would have totally caved and spared the county a ton of money.


Quote:

Audiotape has a funny way of making a professional out of anyone (obviously excluding applicant situations where the examiner knows that there will be no chance of the tape ever getting into the hands of the person being "tested").

This is true but give SDPD credit for taping the thing. We would all be better off in all departments taped.

-Marty