Hi all, yep you read right, I am, along with everyone else being forced to take a mandatory poly for a natural bodybuilding competition this saturday, not only that I am being made to cough up the $40 for it myself!! this is going to be a group style, with about 20 competitors to test in 8 hours  ???  can they do a legitamate poly the DAY OF the contest??, in this short of a time period?, every body is going to be so jacked up, with tanning stuff all over there hands, no food in them, full of caffeine, etc.. with so many to do in a short time, obviously a full interview type test is not possible, and from the people I have talked to, it seems to be a direct lie CQ type test, with a few, "do you intend to lie on this test?" CQ' thrown in..my only thing is this, the list of banned substances is over 50, so general type ?'s are going to be applied, things such as ephedra I have taken a few years ago, when every 7-11 in the US carried it, but the organizations statute is 5 years!! so if they ask "have you ever taken any banned substances" a NO answer could come up as deceptive..any advice? I have read the truth behind the lie..?? but this scenario isnt really covered, any suggestions?? this dosnt seem like a legitimate test at all....??

This website's goal is to help truthful persons protect themselves against the risk of a false positive outcome, not to help deceptive persons beat the system. You've mentioned that you don't meet the conditions for the competition and plan on deceiving the organizer about your use of ephedra. I think that's un-sportsmanlike, and I'm not particularly interested in helping you.

On the other hand, it goes against all notions of fair play to judge peoples' honesty and integrity on the basis of a pseudoscientific fraud like polygraph testing. To answer your question, no, no legitimate polygraph exam can be conducted in 15-20 minutes, even by the low standards of the polygraph community. The polygrapher contracted for the event will be what other polygraphers derisively term a "chart roller," someone who hurriedly goes through the motions for cash. The consensus amongst polygraphers is that a polygraph examination should last longer, typically at least an hour. But no matter how long the examination, the underlying procedure has no scientific basis and is without validity as a means of detecting deception. In fact, the "test" is fundamentally dependent on trickery, not science, as the standard polygraph technique requires the polygrapher to lie to and otherwise deceive the person being "tested" about the nature of the procedure.

Download The Lie Behind the Lie Detector (1 mb PDF) to learn how anyone can pass a polygraph "test," whether or not one is telling the truth. It's quite possible that some of your fellow competitors -- some of whom may have used banned substances -- will have also read it.