Marty wrote on Oct 19
th, 2002 at 8:53pm:
George,
It will be interesting to see if the class action attys will take this on. Since employment screening is pretty much limited to govt or govt mandated private sector programs, it won't be as attractive financially as other opportunities. I'm sure you will keep us informed about events here.
Isn't Mark Zaid already doing this? I hope the NAS report gives him some fresh ammunition.
Quote:Perhaps the political liabilities will be more productive, but in the wake of 9-11, cries of "national security" will provide cover given the widespread ignorance and belief in the workability of the polygraph extant.
This can, of course, work both ways. It's only because of the "polygraph mystique" that the public has condoned increased use of polygraph screening. If that mystique is shattered and faith in the polygraph is fingered as a national security liability, the tides can change very quickly.
Quote:Improving public polygraph "literacy" is the key factor facilitating the rest of this. This has the adverse consequence of likely reducing the tool's effectiveness as a criminal interrogation tool. Interrogations can be and are abused but the issue of corruption of investigative processes is quite broad and is not polygraph specific.
This may be a difficult issue, given the statistics-based rationale behind the NAS's findings: a lot depends upon the prevalence of the guilty among a tested population.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that the polygraph makes mistakes (which information you could disseminate widely without destroying the concealed information upon which the polygraph depends). The real problem is that the public believes the polygraph detects lies, which means people tend not to take the error rates into account. As I see it, the only way to dispel this myth and put the polygraph's accuracy into correct perspective is to let the public "in on the secret", which will simultaneously destroy whatever leverage the polygraph has towards generating reactions concominant with lying.
It should also be noted that, while the NAS did conclude that SI polygraphy has results "well above chance", it was still highly critical both of the quality and quantity of the research done on this and other issues, and of the generalizability of laboratory research to field work.
Skeptic