187Dick,
You write in part:
Quote:
...While it would seem to make sense that mentally over-riding the fight-flight response would be a matter of mental self discipline, suppressing millions of years of evolutionary response behavior is almost impossible if the examiner is doing his job properly. The very effort to suppress responses actually increases them well below the conscious level of thought....
Because I gather you know your standard craft and understand how countermeasures are applied, I am left wondering if the aforementioned quoted material is merely disinformation for the naive reader. Of course you realize that the utilization of countermeasures has nothing to do with suppressing responses or over-riding ANS responses, BUT has to do with PRODUCING responses to control/comparison questions. A variety of methods are available to accomplish this end in such a way as neither you nor your colleagues can reliably detect either the process or the outcome.
You further write:
Quote:
...I have a sincere belief that the vast majority of those who were not hired because they were suspected of using countermeasures far outnumber those who were not hired because of something shameful, but irrelevant, in their background....
You seem to have left out the most important category for many of the visitors to this site: those who have done nothing shameful (as you phrase it), and were denied employment because the polygraph process led to them being falsely branded a liar regarding such issues. The countless tellings of this story by self-alleged victims provides the motivation for prospective innocent examinees to consider the use of countermeasures.
And finally, you further write:
Quote:
...I do admit that there are too many unethical or poorly trained examiners in the polygraph community. I wish there was a way to raise the standards and remove the examiners from the field who do not belong there. Perhaps that would people less apprehensive about submitting themselves to an examination....
My guess would be that the number of examiners who are truly openly, routinely, and diabolically unethical is a relatively small number. It is further my opinion that the number of examiners who are untrained is virtually the number of examiners in practice, i.e., all are taught to reach conclusions based on diagnostic techniques which have little to no diagnostic validity. Although removing unethical examiners (if they could be identified) is a step in the right direction, unfortunately, it is a small step at best in that the greatest and most frequently occurring affront/unfairness to the examinee is the quackery (the polygraph test in the hands of an ethical examiner) that in part or whole has an extreme impact on his or her life. Regards...