Happy New Year! 
 
With the advent of a new year, one of my resolutions is that if I choose to continue posting on this forum I will try to be more objective and less rigid. EosJ, with his own objectivity, has been a positive influence on me in this way. I have honestly become quite bored with this forum lately after I achieved the title "Very Senior User," and part of that boredom is because it has become tedious to rigidly side with the pro-polygraph people simply because my experience gives me confidence in the polygraph process. My confidence may have more to do with my own skill as a polygrapher and interrogator than it does with polygraphers in general always performing at the same level across the board. The polygraph instrument is pure science.  It does exactly what it is designed to do: it monitors and records the various physiological changes extremely well. However, the polygraph process is as much art as it is science. I will admit that, while many polygraphers will just sit on the science part while they put the art in a closet off to the side where you aren't supposed to notice it. And when the art is on, the science follows, in my opinion. When the art is on, the damn process works, in my opinion, nearly 100% of the time. However, when the art is off, the science is at best questionable and at worst, well . . . finish that sentence yourself. But the point is, when I post here on this forum in this new year, I intend to be very candid with you and tell it like it is--or at least with more objecitivity--than other polygraphers heretofore have done on this forum. Fair enough? 
 

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:


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

The operative words in my post are IF and BOREDOM, guys.

I understand that I'm the only available target on this website right now, but this is ridiculous. I simply wanted to make a statement in this post, not field questions.  Other topics are good enough for questions and answers, rather than using this one entitled "New Year's Resolution" as such a vehicle. I've grown weary of this website lately, so IF I choose to continue posting, it will be occasionally and either in another original post by me, or in response to another topic. Got it?  Good.

I'm still around, Digithead. Please don't be sour with me just because I made Very Senior User before you did.

Thanks for your thanks. I have often enjoyed these exchanges, despite having grown a little bored lately.

My boredom stems from people who discount experience--which I continually tout as more important than questionable lab studies or secondhand "knowledge"--and simply reply with their canned words and opinions. However, I appreciate those of you who are interesting to talk to, and I owe it to you to be frank and open about the polygraph process. And I understand most of your feelings, even if you are 100% against the polygraph. I hate the machine even though I use it.  And while I believe, from personal experience, that it works almost all the time when conducted by a competent examiner, I hate how some adjudicators--in this case those adjudicators who decide whether a person is hired or not--give the polygraph more weight than any imperfect process deserves.