Something I failed to address (I can only field so many fly balls at once!
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Quote:
AS, are you aware that published polygraph failure rates for many law enforcement agencies including the FBI, LAPD and City of Phoenix, AZ PD are currently at or over 50%? This does not seem to square with your above contention.
How can you possibly know this? If someone "fails" and makes no damaging admissions, how can you know that they lied?
Moreover, if in your experience, those who fail are such a tiny percentage compared to those who pass, how can you be sure that a large number in the latter group are not deceptive individuals who employed countermeasures?
Gino, when you say the published failure rates for those agencies is over 50%, I know for a fact that is absolutely false if you are talking about employment screening exams. An outright failure in a screening exam is a relatively rare event. If you speak of failure as meaning the polygraph "failed" to produce a conclusive result, you'd be a little less than a mile off the bullseye because inconclusive results are, of course, much more common that outright failures. In my experience, for every person who fails a screening exam, there are at least 100 who don't fail, and most of them pass the polygraph (some are inconclusive).
Now, if you are talking about criminal polygraph exams, there are other possibilities. Again, if you mean by failure rates that a confession wasn't elicited, then 50% may be correct. Most polygraphers would love it if 50% of all their criminal polygraph exams ended with a confession. That batting average would make you a millions in the big league. If you mean by failure rates that 50% of the people tested in a criminal exam fail the exam, I'd call that figure disappointingly low, since probably more than 50% of the accused defendants actually did the crime.
So you see, it all depends on your definition of failure rates. Is it a failure on the part of the polygraph, or is it a failure on the part of the examinee? Get your facts straight, Gino, because there is no way in hell that 50% of the job applicants tested in any of those agenices outright failed their polygraph exams.
As for how I could "know" that a person who failed a polygraph lied, I can't. But I'd take the odds to Vegas that they did, because that is how confident I am, through experience, that the little box you all hate so much really works.
As for how do I know that a large percentage of those who passed the polygraph didn't do so through countermeasures? Well, the research doesn't support that; in fact, remember that the research I gave you shows that countermeasures do nothing for the innocent examinee. Ultimate truth is only known to God. Without God's input, I'll take the next best thing, which right now is the polygraph.