Marty,
Your latest post causes me to wonder once again why polygraphers have to "know" what a lie looks like on the chart before they can find another one. 
If the premise were correct that a lie will cause a significantly "taller" spike than a truth, why not establish a baseline using a series of questions the examiner knows the true answers to, ie "Is today Friday?", "Is your name Marty?", etc. With this baseline established, responses that were significantly stronger would be scored as lies. 
What about it, polygraphers?

Breeze,

You write:

Quote:


No doubt, law enforcement properly uses investigatory techniques that are not science-based diagnostic tests, such as interviews and interrogations. But the polygraph community presents polygraphy to the public as a highly reliable, scientifically-sound diagnostic test for deception. (No such claims are typically made with regard to interviews or interrogations.) DoDPI and the American Polygraph Association have even taken to calling polygraphy the "psychophysiological detection of deception" or "forensic psychophysiology."

It is hardly "weak" of me to point out that claims that CQT polygraphy is a science-based diagnostic test are patently false.

I agree with you that the fact that a purported diagnostic technique cannot be proven to my satisfaction (or to the National Academy of Sciences,' or the the vast majority of scientists') does not mean that it is entirely without merit. CQT polygraphy does have some utility to the extent that it encourages some subjects to be more candid than they would be absent the polygraph. But I think you confuse utility with validity.

You note that, "[your] applicants almost without fail will admit disqualifying information after failing an exam, and it will be specific to the area in which they failed." It is hardly surprising that applicants who ultimately admit to disqualifying information would do so specifically with regard to the area in which they "failed," because it is precisely regarding that area that they will be interrogated in the "post-test" phase.

You asked me to "explain...how a follow up exam, done for the purpose of verifying use of CM is an admission that detection is unreliable?" First, as I pointed out in my post of 25 June, a GKT itself cannot "show conclusively" that a test subject actually used information that only someone who visited AntiPolygraph.org would know. It can only show that a person is likely to have knowledge of such information. If you could reliably detect countermeasures, there would be little point in running a follow-up GKT that cannot show that a subject used countermeasures.

Note that the polygrapher who suspects a subject of having employed countermeasures is the wrong person to administer a follow-up GKT in an attempt to determine whether a subject has knowledge that only someone who has visited AntiPolygraph.org would possess. The polygrapher will have a bias toward confirming his suspicions that could very well influence the outcome of the procedure.

Finally, you wrote to Marty, "Personally, I would like to see an applicant do all the research he has time for in order to make an informed choice." If that's the case, then why not refer all applicants to AntiPolygraph.org before their polygraph examinations?

orolan wrote on Jul 5^th, 2003 at 10:32pm:


Let me provide a scenario to clarify this. Imagine the following two people who both smoked dope every other weekend in their senior year of HS but had been clean since. Imagine one had, together with a friend, stolen a neighbor's high end stereo and TV and pawned them but were never caught.

Typically, one of the "controls" is a broad question about stealing when you were young while a "relevant" might be a more specific instance of stealing > $200 from an employer. And of course the drug questions would also be "relevants."

It is highly likely that the person who stole and pawned the electronic equipment would be more reactive to the theft question than the drug question and would therefor be the one more likely to be hired by LE, other factors being equal. OTOH, a third person who had never been involved with drugs at all, perhaps as a result of knowing someone that OD'ed but had also never stolen even a candy bar would likley react more to the "relevant" drug question, even if completely innocent, just from being accused since he would be completely comfortable he had never stolen anything while the examiner is *assuming* otherwise.

It should be clear from this just how difficult it is to establish the validity of the polygraph when used in a CQT, and how, in some cases, a CQT may be biased against an innocent person.

-Marty

To the individual inquiring about the booklet " how to sting the polygraph " the individual that says they both suck has either got to be a polygraph operator or a cop or possibly even a Fed !

I can honestly tell you that this technique does work ! I have been using it for the past four years having to take a polygraph test every six months because of the federal control that I have on me ! I am an ex-federal con and if you think an ex-con would tell the truth to his PO or a therapist that he is forced to have to see and talk to you got another thing coming.! Get real after having been screwed by the federal system and still being screwed by the federal system you come to a new reality, a new way of thinking. Yes be very afraid of the polygraph for it is not a lie detector it can no more detect whether a person is lying or telling the truth then you have the ability to go to heaven until God that you are taking over ! How absolutely absurd is that !

Yes definitely get the book ! From someone who is been using these techniques for four years a total of eight now going on nine polygraph tests which I have passed with flying colors I can definitely tell you the polygraph is most emphatically a farce, a fraud, an absolute lie in and of itself ! The inventor Dr. William Nelson a NASA scientist who developed it said he was only creating a party gig to be used against his brother-in-law to be. The feds stole the patent and turned this device into what is now the biggest lying piece of hardware damages people's lives that the feds could have ever hoped for. Don't let the polygraph interrogator have the upper hand !

" [b]Get the book "

Ark,

When you compare the account that you quoted with the reality of Marston and Wonder Woman, you have a very good example of truth being stranger than an admittedly pretty strange fiction...