LBCB,
Even if we were to accept your art/science analogy, how does a potential examinee distinguish the artists from the hacks? What recourse does one have against the hacks?
And in this recent post, you say:
LieBabyCryBaby wrote on Jan 6
th, 2007 at 12:34am:
The "science" of polygraphy is more than just those simple instruments. The scientific justification for the polygraph is that when a person feels fear about getting caught in a lie, or when they feel guilt about a crime, or when something about a particular issue is signficant to them, an "orienting response" occurs, i.e., their attention is focused on that issue, which we know without a doubt causes physiological reactions to occur. The problem is that the strength of those physiological reactions vary from person to person, and even from question to question during a polygraph. For example, if you and I both participated in the murder of an individual, and we were both polygraphed, we would both have physiological reactions to the relevant questions about the murder. However, each of our reactions to the relevant questions would vary--my reaction to the relevant question might "spike" right off the chart, while your reaction might be only halfway up the page. The reaction would be there in both cases, but it would not be indentical. The reactions are easily predictable. But the magnitude of the reactions is variable, and this is where we can run into problems. It's not a matter of anxiety or nervousness--those things don't affect the reactions. Rather, it's a matter of focus and orienting response variables.
However, the National Academy of Sciences found evidence in the polygraph and psychological research opposite to your statement above, stating on page 2 of their Executive Summary (
https://antipolygraph.org/nas/exec.pdf) about the "science" behing the polygraph:
"Although psychological states often associated with deception (e.g., fear of being judged deceptive) do
tend to affect the physiological responses that the polygraph measures, these same states can arise in the absence of deception. Moreover, many other psychological and physiological factors (e.g., anxiety about being tested) also affect those responses. Such phenomena make polygraph testing intrinsically susceptible to producing erroneous results."
They also state later on the same page that:
"Polygraph research has not developed and tested theories of the underlying factors that produce the observed responses. Factors other than truthfulness that affect the physiological responses being measured can vary substantially across settings in which polygraph tests are used. There is little knowledge about how much these factors influence the outcomes of polygraph tests in field settings."
How can you refute our nation's top science advisors?
Regards,
digithead