PDD-Fed,

You wrote in part:

Quote:


God had nothing to do with it. Rather, you can thank the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, who recommended polygraph screening in a knee-jerk reaction to the Rampart Area scandal. Since LAPD adopted polygraph screening in February 2000, approximately half of otherwise qualified applicants have been denied employment on the basis of polygraph chart readings, and many truthful applicants have been wrongly branded as liars. For more on this, see my commentary, "LAPD polygraph test results don't tell full truth," published in the Los Angeles Daily News and the statements of LAPD applicants falsely accused on the AntiPolygraph.org Personal Statements page.

Beachtrees,

You said, "Where is the flim-flam? You're soaking in it."  You then quoted Mr. M's book, "But nowadays, the card trick has largely given way to the “numbers test...."” as your "proof" that the numbers test is (as you put it) "flim-flam"

Yeah, real good.  Here I see one pissed off, narrow minded guy with no life and a one sided agenda, quoting another  pissed off, narrow minded guy with no life and a one sided agenda...  Yes sir, that surely is "science"...

By the way, here is something else for you to chew on and then call me a "liar" (I'm sure you will, you have to in order to protect your position that all polygraph examiners are "scam artists')...It so happens that I NEVER tell anyone the polygraph procedure detects "lies", nor do I tell them when they fail, that they "lied".  I tell them that I am checking for "significant" responses to certain questions. (that's what  the polygraph is recording anyhow).  When the subject lies, I show him his responses (just like I do on the numbers test.)  You see, the reason the largest response is frequently to the "key" on a numbers test, is because the number is significant just from haven been chosen by the examinee. I then point to the question(s) on the test showing similiar responses and ask him why a particular question seems significant to him.  I then leave it up to him to explain his reponses to me.  It may take a little time, but eventually he tells me about the 200 hits of LSD he sold last week.  I then report that and someone more deserving gets the job.  So, Beechtrees, I ask again, where's the "flim-flam'?)   

PDD-Fed
   

beech trees,

You wrote in part:

Quote:


Not true.  I inform the examinee what I am looking for prior to the acquaintance test and as well what the test is for.

Then you wrote in part:

Quote:


I think the debates on this topic speak for themselves.  There is an abundance of evidence to support polygraph as a valid forensic science when used for criminal specific issue testing.  You say you have passed a polygraph with your knowledge but did not say you were deceptive to the relevant issue(s).  If you were not being deceptive, nothing is proven of your knowledge but that the polygraph was valid in your instance.

George wrote in part:

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Yes.

George, you asked,


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Absolutely, If there are significant responses present, then they are reported as such.  And in the (rare) caes, they are unresolved, then that is also reported.  By the way, there are also lots of times, that the exam is NSR (No Significant Responses) present, and that is reported as well.

George, for me the bottom line is that the vast majority of polygraph examiners I have met, certainly the other government examiners I know are not the malicious "scam artists" this site likes so much to rant and rave about.  They are not uneducated flim-flams.  In fact they do not have any political agenda and do not have any financial stake in whether polygraph lives or dies.

How is this??????

This is because the examiners I have known do NOT depend in any way on polygraph for their livelyhood.  Remember, these people are federal/state/local government employees.   If polygraph went away tomorrow, they would simply revert to the detectives, criminal investigators and counter-intel agents they were before they ever went to polygraph school.  They would not so much as skip a single paycheck.  These people do this job, because they strongly BELIEVE in what they do.  In the federal government, they are college graduates, many with advanced degrees.  Contrary to the arguements put forth on this site, they feel that they have improved the safety and security of the citizens of their communities.  Why do they feel so strongly?

In the case of criminal issue examiners, they know that they have put alot of really bad people in prison.  These criminals would have never got there if it were not for polygraph, period.  These are examiners who test eight soldiers in an armory where an M-16 has been stolen.  Six pass, one is "No-Opinion", and the eighth falls the test, confesses to the theft, and leads investigators to the stolen weapon...Your readers don't want to believe this, but this is exactly how it goes, over, and over, and over again...

In the case of pre-employment screeners, these guys rightfully refer to countless cases over the years, where they have identified applicants who, had it not been for polygraph testing, would have been hired into badge and gun carrying jobs, even though they had been involved in everything from drug dealing, to child molesting, to drive-by shootings.  Background investigations almost NEVER turn this stuff up.  What other than polygraph, do you suggest? 

George, we can argue validity rates, privacy issues, and what to do with false positives/negatives all day long.  These are all fair concerns.  Nonetheless, I would ask you to consider the examiners who are truly dedicated to what it is we do.  We have made mistakes for we are human and those of us who take this endevour seriously, are always looking for better ways.  Frankly, your endless depiction of the polygraph community as a wagon train of card dealing, shell shuffling gypsies, is not only inaccurate, but is getting really, really "old."   

PDD-Fed

Quote:


No, not really. There is no arguing the facts:

1. Polygraphs have never been found to be more accurate than chance, ie.e, a simple coin-toss.

2. Many polygraph interrogations, regardless of the testing format, are sickening violations of the test subject's Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth Amendments to The US Constitution.

3. How can there be any argument here, when a false positive in many cases results in the ruination of a man's career, finances, and/or personal life? How many men and womens' lives have you ruined or irrevocably changed in this fashion?

PDD-Fed,

In reply to my question whether, in light of your admission that the polygraph does not detect lies, you ever render a "deception indicated" or "significant response" decision absent any substantive admission by a subject, you wrote in part:

Quote:


If the polygraph cannot detect lies, then just what does it mean when you report that there are "signficant responses" present? What the hell do those responses signify?! Absent an admision/confession, you haven't got a clue: the polygraph cannot detect lies. But in most governmental agencies, "significant responses" are taken to mean that the subject was lying. Applicants for employment who show "significant responses" are branded as liars and their applications are summarily rejected. All on the basis of a technique that has no scientific basis whatsoever and cannot detect lies.

However honorable your intentions, you, and your colleagues in the polygraph community, are participants in a process that on a regular basis results in innocent people being wrongly accused of deception and denied due process. It is this fundamental injustice that we find un-American and intolerable. We acknowledge that polygraphy has some utility in getting admissions from the naive and the gullible, but we believe that the collateral damage you (the polygraph community) are inflicting on the innocent is  unacceptable.

Members of the polygraph community may genuinely believe in polygraphy, but that belief does not alter the fact that they are charlatans--practitioners of a fraudulent art that has no grounding in the scientific method.

Our purpose here at AntiPolygraph.org is to warn members of the public, especially those who may face a polygraph interrogation, of the fraud you and your colleagues in the polygraph community are practicing against them. If this causes you chagrin, get used to it. We're not going away. But you're welcome to challenge anything we say in this uncensored forum.

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beech trees,

I will respond to you in part.   

First, I believe it to be quite clear from my prior posts what the acquaintance exam is used for.

Second, where has it ever been proven that it is incumbent for a polygraph examiner to lie to the examinee for the exam/test to be valid?

Third, my arguments for the validity of CQT polygraph were based on peer reviewed scientific research.  I am not here to convince anyone of anything.  Banter as you may, it does not change the results of the current available scientific research. You have a right to your 'opinion' about polygraph.  Conflicting views neither prove or disprove that polygraph is a science.  I have already debated this topic providing the contradictory evidence of CQT polygraphs validity and will let it stand at that.

Fourth, please cite for me recent federal court rulings on polygraph were there is reference to blanket exclusion as forensic scientific evidence.  Please cite a recent case were the mere mention of polygraph is grounds for a mistrial.

Finally, I don't think you have paid close attention to what I have wrote in the past.  I do not nor have I ever conduct pre-employment polygraphs.  So I have never disqualified anyone with a polygraph exam/test countermeasures or not.

With regard to the RI polygraph test, it is not Mr. Maschke or any of his 21st century antipolygraph colleagues who long ago largely dismissed this form of testing, but the polygraph community itself.  Although sorely lacking in scientific control, it presumably was the aim of Cleve Backster and others (hardly stalwarts of the antipolygraph community) some forty plus years ago to remove the embarrassment of RI testing from the polygraph community through the introduction of the control question “test.”  That which has been overlooked in this present discussion and which most assuredly gets the cart before the horse is that the RI test has no validity as a diagnostic test.  Discussions about countermeasures to this format largely miss the point.  This format is simply a series of "hot-button" items (relevant questions) which may be intercompared without any form of control and which each individually can cause autonomic response for a plethora of reasons (amongst others--simply the circumstance of having been questioned about subject matter(s) obviously emotionally laden to all).  Many of those who have used it over the years (particularly in the federal polygraph intelligence community) have not even pretended that it had a scientific basis or that it should be objectively scored (generally some form of rank-order scoring when done).  They simply “clinically” read these charts---a polygrapher’s euphemism for arriving at any conclusions/opinions that he cares to see/render based on any or no considerations he chooses to employ.  This format is such an embarrassment to this day, that even the polygraph community would rise up in arms if told to abandon their control question test (albeit completely lacking in scientific control) for this nonsense....