Public Servant,
You write in part:
Quote:My answer to wholelotta is to refrain from employing countermeasures at all. ?First of all, it's cheating.
As noted in Chapter 4 of
The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, I think it is not unethical for truthful persons -- faced with an employer that routinely lies to and otherwise deceives applicants and/or employees through the polygraph process -- to employ countermeasures to protect themselves against the risk of a false positive outcome.
Quote:Secondly, you'll likely get caught.
The National Academy of Sciences, which recently completed a review of the scientific evidence on the polygraph, found no evidence that such is the case. And in studies by Dr. Charles R. Honts and collaborators, even experienced polygraphers were unable to detect countermeasure use at better-than-chance levels of accuracy.
Quote:And thirdly, who's to say what is a control question and what is not. As I pointed out in the thread "Loose Lips by Claire Berlinski," the examinee in the story CMed on a relevant during a test which had no control questions.
Mistaking a relevant question for a "control" question is perhaps the biggest risk when employing countermeasures, which is why we suggest in
The Lie Behind the Lie Detector that reactions be augmented only to those questions that the reader is certain are "control" questions.
Here is a link to the message thread
Loose Lips by Claire Berlinski to which Public Servant referred.