My brief personal background:

I'm a college graduate with a B.S. in one of the "real" sciences (biology, chemistry, physics, etc).  I am fully employed and am in no rush to change jobs.  I recently spent some time exploring jobs that I might enjoy...for the sake of the job and not for the amount of compensation I would receive.   

While researching law enforcement careers, I became intrigued by this instrument (for lack of better word).  I have read hundreds and hundreds of threads on this site.  I read TLBTLD in one sitting.  I re-read several of the chapters over again at later times.

My personal belief is this instrument is utter nonsense.  I suspect it is VERY beneficial at forcing admissions as long as the lie behind the test is intact.  I do not believe it has an acceptable accuracy of "detecting deception."  Without question, the instrument performs worse when the person being tested is truly honest.   

There seems to be quite a bit of debate about whether cm's can be detected.  I am relatively convinced that many physical cm's can be detected, including the sphincter cm.  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find much discussion/evidence of successful/failed attempts using mental cm's.

At this point, I am quite curious.  I have spent weeks/months/years of my life studying all kinds of phenomenon.  Some of them are insignificant to most of society.  Others have been extremely significant.  This is just one more thing that has "peaked" my curiosity.

To my point:  I plan on taking one or more polygraphs purely for fun of it.  I believe I could find several "opportunities" to be administered a polygraph if I looked around.

Where the normal person feels a burden to "pass" the "test" for a job, I do not believe I will feel the same pressure.  If I were to "fail" the "test," it would purely be interesting data to me.  And until I find my next curiosity to investigate, I plan on goofing around with this test.

My biggest question at this point is whether the cm's can be detected.  I completely believe that the polygraph can accurately measure my pulse, bp, skin conductivity, etc.  I do not believe it can consistently tell when an individual employs mental cms to control questions.

If anyone wants to help me setup or prepare for this game of mine, I welcome input from people on both sides of the table.

For the sake of this discussion, I have very little to lie about on a polygraph.  Many of the control questions would not even apply to me (i.e. drinking and driving ever).  Luckily, this would make playing with cm's even more interesting I believe.  From the side of the pro-polygraph, I would pass with flying colors if I were "honest."  But, if I employ mental cm's, I will get caught.  I am even considering using cm's for one or more "tests" and doing nothing at all for separate test(s).  I would be interested to see what occurs when I "spike" one set of controls, but appear relatively benign on the controls for a different "test." 

I realize this is completely unscientific.  There is no way I would be able to test this in a manner that could hold up to scrutiny.  Nonetheless, I am very interested in the subject.  Many claims have been made and I would love to put some of this to rest in my head.