AnalSphincter,
     I've read a good number of your posts, and you've even responded to me before.  I'm willing to believe there at least some validity to the polygraph examination.  Now, I'm asking that you give your opinion on what to do the day of the exam to prepare yourself for such an 'ordeal.'  I intend to be perfectly truthful, but if you can provide any 'tips' on how to be during the exam., I would appreciate it.  Obviously, I'm not looking for countermeasure advice, but more like the following:

Don't move (they say this, but what does 'not moving' mean..... at all, I'd hate to get yelled at for not moving enough)
Just relax (the breathing is supposed to be relaxed and normal......... should I try to control my breathing to some degree, not to beats per minute but do a soothing pace?)

To me, I can't follow instructions to relax without focusing on how I'm breathing.

I guess what I'm really asking for is what should I do and act to put myself in the right frame of mind to take the examination and show that I am truely honest.

Anal wrote : overwhelming majority of people who take a polygraph pass it. Ask that of the 50% LAPD applicants who fail.
That is not the majority, you are slipping a little.

Not slipping at all.  There's no way in hell that 50% of LAPD applicants FAIL the exam.  Inconclusive, perhaps, if they have some lousy polygraphers. 

Retired?  When I want to be.  Think I'll retire now.

That's just plain silly, George.  The LAPD link leads nowhere, and the others simply lead to posts on this forum.  I can read posts on this forum without having links to them.

If anyone is stating that 50% of all applicants are failing their department's polygraphs, it's probably administrative people calling inconclusives outright failures.  I've never heard of such a statistic except on this site.  For that to happen, either there would have to be some really off-the-wall techniques being used, or the applicant pool would have to come right out of San Quentin.

P.S.  Anal, having taken the aforementioned number of polys, you can be sure that I will be using the methods listed on this site, because I have nothing to lose.  I also have nothing to hide, but apparently that's not enough for the lemmings of law enforcement management who happen to think that polys are SO great.

Well, I'm glad you said it makes "little difference" whether the polygraph result is inconclusive or outright failure, George.  That simply illustrates what I've been saying all along--it takes a lot to jump the chasm between inconclusive results and deceptive results.  I personally don't know any departments or agencies that would disqualify someone solely on the basis of an inconclusive polygraph result.  An inconclusive result means nothing to a polygrapher--it's not a yay or a nay with regard to truthfulness or deceptiveness.  In fact, many departments and agencies, when faced with an inconclusive polygraph result go to a tier 2 polygraph exam in an attempt to clear up the inconclusive, which almost always either pushes the examinee to pass the exam or simply leads to another inconclusive, after which no further testing is done.

Again, I REPEAT, it takes a lot to outright FAIL a polygraph exam.  Don't equate inconclusive results with failure on the part of the examinee.  On the contrary, I would call inconclusive results a failure on the part of the examiner to produce conclusive results.

Any department or agency that would disqualify any applicant based solely on an inconclusive polygraph exam--or EVEN A DECEPTIVE RESULT--is putting too much emphasis on the polygraph.  The polygraph is very good at what it was designed to do, regardless of what your regurgitated views are, George.  However, the polygraph should never be more than just one piece of the screening process.  Trust me when I say that I know of many, many applicants whose polygraph exams ended with inconclusive results who are on the job with their chosen departments and agencies today.

I don't know what your situation was, George.  Did you outright FAIL your exam, or was it inconclusive?  That would say a lot about your situation and possibly provide further evidence of what my suspicions are with regard to failed polygraph examinees.

anythingformoney wrote on Feb 27^th, 2005 at 6:50pm:


I don't see how my point that it makes little difference to the applicant who is disqualified based on polygraph results whether or not his/her polygraph charts were scored as "deception indicated" or "inconclusive" in any way "llustrates" your claim that it "takes a lot to jump the chasm between inconclusive results and deceptive results." Please explain.

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For such agencies as the FBI, passing the polygraph is a pre-requisite for employment. Failure to pass is grounds for disqualification. And again, the failure-to-pass ratio for FBI special agent applicants is presently on the order of 50%. This flies in the face of your oft-repeated assertion that "the overwhelming majority of examinees [for law enforcement hiring] easily pass the polygraph."

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I offer, as I did in another thread, that all it takes for a truthful person to wrongly "fail" is for him/her to be more concerned about the consequences of not being believed with regard to the relevant questions than he/she is with regard to the more general and less serious "control" questions.

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I fully agree with your assessment that any department or agency that would disqualify an applicant based solely on an inconclusive or even a "deceptive" result is putting too much emphasis on the polygraph. Yet such reliance on the polygraph seems to be the rule rather than the exception amongst agencies with pre-employment polygraph programs. It is most certainly the rule with regard to such federal agencies.

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I could agree with you that the polygraph has utility as an interrogational prop (with examinees who don't understand that it's a fraud), but as a scientific test for deception it falls flat. On this point there is broad consensus amongst scientists.

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The fact of the matter is that many applicants for federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies are being disqualified based on polygraph results alone.

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Your history of forging posts on this message board makes it difficult to take your word at face value.

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As I noted in my public statement, "Too Hot of a Potato: A Citizen Soldier's Encounter With the Polygraph," my FBI HQ file states that I "failed" all of the relevant questions.

anythingformoney wrote on Feb 28^th, 2005 at 4:30am:


Come now A.S., You posted a response to Loopy exactly eight minutes after "Loopy's" post. That response contained approx 200 words.

Subsequently, you posted a response to another "Loopy" post 7 minutes later. Not surprisingly, it was somewhat shorter than 200 words.



marty