Saidme wrote on Aug 13^th, 2003 at 2:46am:


The actual finding was:

Quote:


-- NAS Report, Executive Summary, p. 4

You'll note a couple of things.  First of all, they don't give a reliability rate, period.  Second, they caveat the statement regarding the populations that are being discussed (e.g. subjects "untrained in countermeasures").  Third, the NAS is, in the above, specifically talking about polygraph research -- exactly the sort you seem to disdain as unrepresentative of the polygraph in the real world.

Finally, if you take an 85% accuracy rate yet hold 100% confidence in your results, you're talking about barking up the wrong tree 15% of the time.  That may sound OK, but we're talking about an awful lot of misdirected investigations and wrongfully accused people.

Quote:


Nope.  But we're always trying to make things better.  If that means a system is fatally flawed, we change it out.  There's no way the Shuttle would fly if engineers gave it only a 75% chance of reaching orbit.  And though your courage is remarkable, I sure as heck wouldn't fly under those conditions, either.

Skeptic

Saidme wrote on Aug 13^th, 2003 at 3:45am:


In my opinion, the polygraph and belief in it are so deeply flawed, in most of its current uses, that doing without completely would be an improvement.

As an interrogation prop for going after criminal subjects for confessions, I'm sure it's quite adequate.  But to actually put faith in any existing technique to discern truth from falsehood is (again in my opinion) wrongheaded and worse than nothing.

Skeptic

Saidme wrote on Aug 13^th, 2003 at 3:19pm:


Thomas Sowell addressed this question perfectly when he wrote,

"No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?"

I didn't think my post would generate this kind of attention.   

Well for whom cares, I practiced these countermeasures.  I did so on a similar chair as the one I would be on and I practiced in front of a full body mirror.  They can not physically be detected unless you really screw up.  It was as if I was just sitting there motionless.  Now the countermeasures effect was obviously (to me anyways) working on the machine also.  How could I be asked the same questions and answer the same way but have a totally different result?  Because they worked?

The machine can be beat.  The machine has been beat.  The machine beats both the right and the wrong people.  These are lives that are being messed with here.

Saidme,

The fact that you make an analogy between the polygraph and the space shuttle tells me that you have absolutely no scientific background whatsoever.  Your analogys, and inability to use them properly, tell me that you don't really understand the science (what little science there is) behind the machine, or that it has no scientific validity at all in detecting deception or differentiating truth.

You think it works based soley on the confessions you obtain.  If you think your charts are indications of deception or truth I think you are either brainwashed or delusional.   

Better purchase a new pair of boots and take that uniform out of mothballs because I feel you might have to go back to humping a beat to pay the bills.