187Dick,
A truly devious polygrapher would acknowledge that false positives do occur. He would then give a song and dance about how these issues are cleared up after further testing. I must say I appreciate the fact you remain civil.
Let me offer an example of innocent examinees who had something to fear from polygraphs:
I've taken several and passed, I've failed one. The silly thing is that I answered the same questions in all of them. If I told you what some of my control questions are you’d probably laugh.
Fair Chance is a poster on this web site. I believe he failed 2 FBI polygraphs and finally passed the last one. It took him over a year to resolve everything. He couldn’t have been lying on some tests and telling the truth on another.
I personally know people who have failed at one federal agency and then passed at another. The same questions were asked each time.
Go to
www.911jobforums.com and read the story posted by engineertofed. He passed several polygraphs with various agencies and then failed two with the FBI. There are other posters on that web site who fall into this category also.
Polygraphers are pretty sensitive when it comes to anyone questioning them. A user named perplexed posted his experience both on this website and at the polygraphpace.com message boards. The funny thing is that polygraphplace seems to have removed his original posts. I’ll let people draw their own conclusions.
Finally, even John Ashcroft acknowledged that there is a 15% false positive rate.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/03/ag030101.html Page 145 of the NAS's report "Polygraphy and Lie Detection" states "There is no evidence that mental countermeasures are detectable by examiners". The report is available for around $40 on half.com.
I know Honts wrote some more about the proportion of examinees who use countermeasures in 2002. If anyone knows what he wrote please post it.
A more accurate statement would be “70 to 80 percent of innocent examinees have nothing to fear. 20 to 30 percent of deceptive examinees have nothing to fear either. Passing one polygraph is no guarantee of passing another one. If you fail you may get a retest but be ready to go through 6 to 18 months of hell to finish the process.”