Hi.,
I am a brand new police polygraph examiner and I thought I would take my few short months of experience and weigh in to this anti-polygraph argument with two small questions. Please don’t boil me in oil for asking this, but…
If the polygraph is so utterly useless and as a result criminals and spies have little to fear of getting caught, then why are there so many postings stressing that if confronted with a lie correctly identified by the polygraph, the person correctly caught should “deny, deny, deny?”
This position would seem to indicate two things. The first is an apparent acceptance that polygraph can in fact correctly identify liars, or the many postings pushing the guilty to continue to deny would simply not exist. The second thing it would suggest to me as a law enforcement officer is that the people on this site are in fact openly attempting to assist the guilty to evade capture. I am not being a “smart ass” here, I am just relating what seems obvious to me.
This also seems to be true for the whole countermeasure controversy. For example, in one recent post by Dr. Drew Richardson (the apparent countermeasure guru) repeats the phrase, “UNDER ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES deny countermeasure use.” He states this FIVE times in as many lines of text. Yet, in the same post, he insists “…examiners can not reliably detect them.”
Well, if Dr Richardson, speaking from purely an objective, scientific position, truly believes that countermeasures cannot be reliably detected, then why is he so fervently telling people who have attempted countermeasures and as a result have been caught in this endeavor, to “deny, deny, deny?”
It would appear to me that Dr. Richardson’s position on this topic is perhaps more personal and emotional than scientific. Otherwise he would not be so determined on instructing people who have been correctly identified as attempting countermeasures, to deny their use at any and all costs. Deliberately skew data? Not a very “scientific” position, I’m afraid.
Yet, former FBI agent Dr. Richardson, like others on this site insists he is making no attempt to assist the guilty.
I’m confused. What am I missing here?
Once again, please don’t drag me behind a truck for asking about these things. I am still learning about all this and I am trying to keep an open mind. ...