I will be going in for a polygraph for a job with the Canadian Government in the next couple days... now I have nothing to hide but know that shit happens regarding polygraphs... I have read "The Lie Behind the Lie Detector" a few times through... and am confident I can pass it... so this is basically what I have in mind...

I have naturally sweaty hands so theylll sweat through the whole thing.. shouldnt be a problem

Go into the polygraph, act like a dummy like I know nothing about polygraphy... act like I think the polygrapher is on my side

Maintain a steady breathing pattern the whole time through until the sensors are unhooked from my body

Raise my cardio activity (through method of doing math in my head) when I get a control question... and block my breathing activity for 4-5 seconds AFTER I answer the question

Keeping up the steady breathing pattern and with a lower heartbeat (cardio activity) than the control question, answer the relevant questions...

maintain the steady breath/cardio during the irrevlant questions (although they dont matter)

ADMIT NOTHING, tell as little as possible...


should I be OK?

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This is quite an admission by you, George.  Yes, this is true.  While an examinee can try to do many things to influence the pneumograph channels, the cardio and electrodermal channels will usually betray him/her.  It is when these betrayals are consistent on the relevant questions despite the countermeasure attempts on the "control" questions that the examinee will be caught in the act.

My point exactly, Bill.  Countermeasures are a real crap-shoot, and becoming more so as time goes by and more examiners receive additional training.

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True, you may end up inconclusive.  Or you may get caught using countermeasures when the truth without countermeasures would have landed you the job.  Or, to give people like George the benefit of much doubt, you might be that one in a million who "undeservedly" fall way down into negative numbers and fail the exam.  Yes, a real crap-shoot.

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Well, I guess you win the lottery.  The other 999,999 people go on with their lives and don't frequent this website. 

LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Nov 21^st, 2006 at 10:37pm:


Great.  My chance to win the lottery was wasted on a simpleton with a physio-gadget accusing me of lying.  Yeah, now I feel better.

Had the wonderful false positive polygraph opinion not cost me the chance to complete further hiring phases with the agency which conducted the "test" and another agency that immediately tossed my application due to the same test I may very well have gone on my merry way.  But unfortunately that did not happen.

No matter what anyone says, I am aware that false positives do occur much, much more frequently than 1/1,000,000.  That's just bad math.

LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Nov 21^st, 2006 at 10:51pm:


An estimate based on what? Why should a neutral observer accept your estimate?

LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Nov 21^st, 2006 at 11:07pm:


I see. So a neutral observer without my "baggage" should accept your word for it, based on your (anonymously and unverifiably) professed experience, that the risk of a false positive outcome in a polygraph examination is 1:10^6. Yet somehow, the National Academy of Sciences did not accept such a notion, finding instead (at p. 202 of The Polygraph and Lie Detection) that "almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy" (original emphasis). How do you explain this? None of the authors of this report were saddled with my alleged "baggage."