Quote:Regardless of your personal beliefs about polygraph, it's validity, or how it is in fact applied, there are obviously many more individuals, and organizations that differ with your opinion.
As more and more people discover that polygraph "testing" is a fraud, support for it will inevitably wane.
Quote:You asked what an obvious "non-hire" would be? Do I really need to answer that? Use your imagination and I'm certain you can come up with a definition of an obvious non-hire within the realm of law enforcement.
I'm curious as to what you mean by an obvious non-hire. I don't think the definition is self-evident. I would suppose the obvious non-hires would be those who don't pass the written, verbal, or physical tests that applicants must pass.
Or are obvious non-hires those whose skin is the wrong color, or who are of the wrong sex, or who in some other way "don't fit the mold?"
Who are these "obvious non-hires," and why is such an arbitrary and capricious methodology as a polygraph chart reading needed to "eliminate" them?
Quote:As for raising the hiring standards, how realistic is that in this day and age of equal opportunity.
The standards for hiring will necessarily depend on the available applicant pool and the staffing requirements of the agency involved. As an example, LAPD is currently eliminating about half of otherwise qualified applicants based on the polygraph. Rather than arbitrarily reducing the applicant pool through the use of an invalid procedure like polygraph chart readings, LAPD could instead require higher scores in its written, verbal, and physical tests. The end result would be the hiring of more qualified applicants.
Quote:George, I'm afraid you are wishing for a very Utopian society. Very commendable, but not realistic?
To seek the elimination of an unfair labor practice such as polygraph screening is hardly an "Utopian" goal. The 1988 Employee Polygraph Protection Act did much toward that end. There is no good reason why the same law should not also apply to government, and the
Comprehensive Employee Polygraph Protection Act we've proposed would effectively accomplish that goal. Law enforcement agencies in other industrialized nations seem to get along just fine without resorting to the quackery of polygraph screening; there is no a priori reason why we in the U.S. must be subjected to such nonsense.