Just some simple number crunching assuming a 15 percent false positive and false negative rate.

Percentage of ApplicantsTelling Truth on Relevant Questions	Percentage of  Applicants Accused of Guilt that are Guilty	Percentage of Applicants Found Truthful that are Truthful
98	10.36585	99.64115
95	22.97297	99.07975
90	38.63636	98.07692
80	58.62069	95.77465
70	70.83333	92.96875
60	79.06977	89.47368
50	85	85
40	89.47368	79.06977
30	92.96875	70.83333
20	95.77465	58.62069
10	98.07692	38.63636
5	99.07975	22.97297
2	99.64115	10.36585

Well I was hoping for some comments on how to refine the numbers, but here’s how I’d start to interpret it.  I think a lot of people on this board are more against the use of the  polygraph for pre-employment purposes than they are for its use in criminal investigations.  I think the chart I posted supports this notion since a much higher percentage of people polygraphed for pre-employment purposes are going to be truthful on the relevant questions that those for criminal investigations.

Basically, column 2 shows us that a deception indicated score becomes less reliable as the percentage of applicants who are telling the truth on relevant questions increases.  For example, if 60%of your applicants are truthful, then 79% of the ones that are accused of lying are lying.  However, if 95% of your applicants are truthful, then only 23% of those accused of lying are actually lying!

Now suppose you’re a federal agency that is polygraphing your contractor’s technical guys (software engineers, mechanical engineers, mathematicians, etc.).  A pretty high percentage of these guys are going to be telling the truth, so you’re going to get a lousy accuracy rate with your accusations of lying.

I have more comments on this, but don’t have time to elaborate.  To summarize, I would suggest that the methods taken to alleviate this problem would allow all spies to pass through, only weeding out some of  the drug abusers, child molesters, killers, etc.

But a much smaller percentage of this technical crowd is going to be of the sex offender/violent crime variety than your general population, so there is still less of a reason to poly the technical crowd then the general public.  And I’m honestly not that concerned if the guy sitting next to me has used drugs too many times if he can do his job well.  I think its more of a risk to our national security to take a less qualified candidate than one who is qualified but used drugs to much ("Well, he screwed up the project, but at least he doesn’t do drugs")

So basically you’re left with something that costs money, can’t catch spies, tortures innocent people, and catches some bad guys at a smaller rate than you could catch them from the general public.

Do you understand how the numbers were calculated?

Looking back at TLBTLD, I see that something similar to this is mentioned on pages 20 and 21under "False Positives and the Base Rate Problem."   

Onesimus,

Enjoyed looking at the stats.  

My problem with it is that it assumses the machine can distiguish between truth and lies, which it can't!

If an experiment is flawed from the start, then results can have no merit.

I have brought up AG Ashcroft's statement of up to 15% false positive rate hoping that the pro-side would address it.

I personally believe that the admission of the 15%  false positive rate is simply the gov allowing itself some wiggle room, when its own results (negative or positive) are disproved.

I wonder what the official stance on false negatives is?  15%  Then were already down to 70% percent accuracy.

Regardless- since its not scientific , its not accurate!!

Probable lies-- are not lies for everyone- (Probable?)

Control Questions- are not scientific controls 
                              are based on probable lies which
                               are not givens.

Relevant questions-  are often provocative and could
                                 get a spiked response from a 
                                 person who finds the question
                                  exciting, scary, funny, stupid...

Polygraphy is an interesting idea.  But when you put the theory to the test it fails.

Why agenices use it is an ethical question.

A quick little primer on Bayesian statistics, even includes references to the junk science called polygraphy:
http://www.abelard.org/briefings/bayes.htm

<<My problem with it is that it assumes the machine can distiguish between truth and lies, which it can't!>>

No, I’m assuming that 85% of the time when someone is lying, their polygrapher will accuse them of lying, and 85% percent of the time when a person is truthful, their polygrapher will find them truthful.  (regardless of the machine’s ability to determine this)   I know the numbers aren’t correct, but they are reasonable estimates.  Even if the numbers were different, we would still see the same trend – that as the truthfulness of your applicants increases, the percentage of those accused of lying who are actually lying will decrease.  (Thus supporting the notion that polygraph is most flawed when applied to pre-employment screening).

<<I wonder what the official stance on false negatives is? 15% Then were already down to 70% percent accuracy.>>

If we assume
X = Fraction who are telling the truth 
Y = Fraction False Positive  (.15 in our case)
Z = Fraction  False Negative (.15 in our case)

Then,

1-X = Fraction who are lying
XY + (1-X)Z = Fraction False Accusation
XY + Z -XZ = Fraction False Accusation

So when Y=Z,
Fraction False Accusation = Fraction False Positive = Fraction False Negative
If Y is not Z, then the Fraction False Accusation is dependent on the fraction of people telling the truth

So in our case the accuracy is 85%  if false positive and false negative rates are both 15%.  But I think that the more important percentages are the ones I showed in the chart.

In fact, the situation could be worse than the numbers shown in the chart.  Lets suppose that 75% of the guilty ones are persuaded by their polygrapher to fess-up.   That’s going to drop all the percentages in the second column if we make it "Percentage of Applicants that don’t confess to anything and are accused of guilt that are guilty".  So an even higher percentage who are rejected solely on the basis of polygraph results (bad poly but no confession) will have been unfairly terminated.  Perhaps I’ll make a chart for this too.

<<if your probable lie question is "have you ever stolen from an employer", well, this might be hard to believe, but some people haven't.>>

Gee, I haven’t and I assume most of my coworkers haven’t!!

Onesimus,

Even with my shoes off and my toes a wigglin' I couldn't  understand all that  math.
 
Do you think you could do my taxes?

Interesting stuff.  I wish I had paid more attention in school.

Digithead,

You write:
Quote:


Absolutely correct and right on!  The only questionable assumption (I realize it was not yours) in the aforementioned example would be the percent of individuals deceptive in our population (base rate) of examinees (i.e. 2 per cent assuming we are still talking about national security issues).  In a population of 10,000 FBI agents that would calculate to 200 spies--I would hope not!  Using a more realistic base rate and the Bayes Theorem calculation would (as you obviously know) lead to an even higher percent rate of false positives.  Best Regards...