pailryder wrote on Oct 4
th, 2007 at 11:42am:
Sarge 1107
My concern is for good people seeking information who come to this site and buy into the belief that they can read tlbtld and help themselves pass their test. I am not afraid of attempts to mask responses plainly evident on a chart. After all, a well told lie is still the best cm I know. If you read The Insiders Guide to Texas Hold'em, would you feel you were ready to set in on a game with Chris Ferguerson or Doyle Brunson? Anyone reading my posts will recognize that I am a pro knowledge, but beware:
A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain.
And drinking largely sobers us again. Alexander Pope (1711)
I don't think I have ever counselled someone to read TLBTLD and to use the countermeasures contained therein to "beat" their polygraph.
In fact, if you care to read my prior posts I have always counselled people to tell the truth. If they choose to use countermeasures that is entirely up to them. I don't think it is unethical to do so as long as they are telling the truth, and I don't think it will hurt their chances any more than trusting those chances to the polygraph will. I failed 75% of my polygraph exams while telling the truth. It is doubtful I could have done much worse by using countermeasures, and likely I could have done better.
I believe that it is important to shed light on the shortcomings of the polygraph, its lack of scientific foundation, and most of all on its inaccuracy.
I don't see how any reasonable person could go through an experience like mine and not conclude that the polygraph is useless as a detector of deception, at least as far as pre-employment screening. All of my posts in which I cite my experience have always specified that it was three pre-employment screening polygraphs that I failed.
I have no experience with specific-issue testing, or any other kind of polygraph testing. But if the polygraph and its operators (three different operators) could so completely wrong about three different subjects on three separate polygraph exams, I don't see how it could be any more accurate in any other circumstance.
If you can explain to me how the polygraph can be completely, totally incorrect in my experience, but good, useful, and accurate in others, I would certainly be willing to listen. And I am not referring to its use as an interrogation intimidator - my past posts have always acknowledged that it is effective in that capacity provided the subject actually believes it will detect lies. Of course, if the subject believes a deck of Tarot cards will detect lies then the Tarot cards will be just as effect as the polygraph, and just as incapable of detecting deception.