nomegusto wrote on Dec 20
th, 2007 at 5:24pm:
JP
We know that innocent people have been wrongly accused of deception. It happens. It's not a perfect system. I'll admit to that. My beef is not about using the CM. It's how or why there using it. I've got a big problem with someone lying on there SF-86, and wanting information to deceive the investigator willingly, and knowingly. Again, if I were to take a test, and was accused of being deceptive, and have had the oppurtunity to clear my name during a post test interview, or interrogation. Such person will be relying on alot more then said squiggly lines. The machine is part of the test, I guarantee a compentent examiner is looking at the totality of the situation, before making their final determination.
Please, someone (preferrably a polygrapher) correct me again if I'm over stepping my bounderies, or if I'm wrong.
Good points nomegusto.
To clarify or extend a couple of things. Final judgments are always made using the totality of available information. Policies and standards of practice are increasingly clear about that. Also, the adjudicators about someone's job status, filing status, guilty status, are most often not the polygraph examiner. This is a reflection of the use and meaning of test data. In psychological testing, an MMPI result itself is never enough to warrant a clinical diagnosis, nor is an IQ test score enough to pronounce someone retarded. People have criticized polygraphy for both sides of the discussion - basing results on test scores, or using extrapolygraphic information - they simply want to criticize. Tests simply give information. Decisions and diagnostic opinions are made by professionals - who sometimes use test results and other information.
I know that some readers of this site would prefer to oversimplify things and reduce the matter to "squiggly lines." But people will fail to learn anything if we leave it at that. Remember. Tests simply give information. In the case of polygraph, that information pertains to how well an individual's test result fits a known model or models, for deceptive or truthful persons. For another example, take a 7th grade spelling test. What we're interested in is how well each student's test score fits our known model for 7th grade spelling scores. So, while test results are a matter of how well a persons responses fit a known model, final grades are often a matter of a lot more information than a single test.
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