Barry_C wrote on Oct 18^th, 2007 at 10:43pm:

For those agencies that have 100 people in line, 99% of whom are more than qualified for the job, then you can set the bar high and only accept those that can make it through a test extremely biased against the truthful (which means better at catching liars).  The cost of errors there is that you lose good people (probably), but you replace them with equally qualified people.

Since you admit there are errors in the polygraph screening process, what makes you believe that when you lose a "good" (truthful) person you are replacing them with another "good" (truthful) person?

How do you know you are not disqualifying a truthful applicant and replacing them with a deceptive one?

What would the difference be in the results if, instead of a polygraph, every applicant who passed the background investigation had to flip a coin?  If the coin lands on "heads" the applicant is disqualified.

If there are "bad" applicants remaining after the BI, the coin toss method would stand a decent chance of eliminating them.  It would also stand a decent chance of eliminating "good" applicants.  However, any "good" applicants that were lost would probably be replaced with another "good" applicant.

How would the results of such an obviously unfair and ill-conceived test be significantly different from the results of polygraph screening applicants who have already passed the BI?