LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Nov 21
st, 2006 at 11:32pm:
George, even if you insist on discounting my experience (and, sadly, I must remain anonymous for legitimate reasons I'm sure you would appreciate), the NAS never said that the false positive was even a likely result.
The NAS's above-cited finding necessarily entails that false positives are not unlikely.
Quote:If you take all of the correct decisions made in correctly administered polygraph exams, and then throw in the inconclusives, the false positives and false negatives would indeed be a tiny minority.
What documentation supports this assertion?
Quote:And you don't see the false negatives on this forum complaining do you?
Why would they?
Quote:So that leaves us with a tiny minority of claimed false positives, of which you are one.
That's a conclusory argument. On the basis of what evidence do you conclude that false positives are a "tiny minority?" Consider that pre-9/11, the FBI's pre-employment polygraph failure rate was about 20%. Post-9/11 it suddenly rose to about 50%. How can such a sudden departure be consistent with false positives being a "tiny minority?"
Quote:And how many of those false positives know anything about the polygraph except what they read and choose to credit or discredit? And how many of them have any experience in the real world as polygraph examiners?
I don't pretend to know. But considering that the FBI has administered fewer than 1,000,000 pre-employment polygraph examinations since it began pre-employment polygraph screening in 1994, those who have wrongly failed the FBI polygraph know from personal experience that your suggestion of a one-in-a-million false positive rate is overly optimistic.