Jester, you stated that the polygrapher lied in a letter to the court. 
This is the first time you have mentioned this "Fact" in any of your posts. You seem to have a habit of adding more of these supposed “facts” as time goes by. 

You're really just making this up as you go aren't you? 

Prejudice implies an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics. Hostility towards convicted sex offenders is not irrational at all. 

Society is hostile those who commit acts injurious to society. The existence of laws and legal punishments is evidence of that hostility.   I don't particularly like criminals. I will admit a certain dislike of convicted sex offenders.  I especially don't like convicted criminals who portray themselves as victims while ignoring the trauma they cause the REAL victims of their crimes.

As a consequence of their voluntary criminal acts, convicted sex offenders are punished. Some are given the opportunity to remain outside of prison while they try to alter the behavior and/or thought patterns that somehow allowed them to justify the crimes they committed. 

These are given a set of rules to go by. They are told follow ALL of these rules or go back to jail. They are given the opportunity to consider whether or not they can follow all of the rules and must promise that they will follow ALL of them. 

Many do follow all of the rules and do fine, but some, like you, begin to look for excuses and justifications for not following the rules. Some try to manipulate their therapists and failing that they create a minor conflict trying to get bounced to another program in search of a therapist they think they can manipulate. Some try to create mountains out of mole hills to shift focus away from their aberrant behavior and towards the system. 

The main problem that I have with all that is that is that NO ONE forced them to make the promises they made to get out of jail, but once they hit the street they try to figure a way to both break the promise and avoid going back to jail.

You in my opinion are trying to do exactly that. If your word is NO GOOD on the contract you signed, why would you expect to be believed here?

Once again, If you don't think you can follow all of the rules you promised you would follow, tell you P.O. you want to revoke your contract and go back to jail. Show the world you have the courage of your convictions.

Sancho Panza

Lieing is lieing.  Be it a letter to the court, a phone call, in  person or all of the above.  Substantially altering the facts, minimizing the details, casting blame on others are all variations of a lie.  I've offered to many details all ready and won't add to that.  You can believe, or not, I don't care.

In the matter of the polygrapher the Judge chose to believe his 'testimony' while rejecting the probation officer.  Not everyone, including myself, agreed with the Judge, in the end that is the only person that matters.  One HUGE requirement of 'therapy' is that you acknowledge your mistake, admit it, if you don't, you may not be released, ever!  I have steadfastly refused to change my testimony in this matter.  To do so when be would mean I have to lie, which then sets me up for failing a polygraph, grounds for termination.  And yet, the State will not accept a polygraph concerning the specific issue as to if I am lieing or not as it concerns this matter.  Polygraphs, as used by the State, are primarily for their prosecution of a case.  If along the way they become helpful for therapy, well, thats OK too.

Mr. Truth you wrote "Sorry, not here to air 100% of my dirty laundry,"

You will notice that I did not relate any specifics regarding your crime and I applauded you "owning" your behavior. 

If you can genuinely empathize with your victim you have progressed beyond what many convicted sex offenders ever achieve. You must admit that the consequences you listed in your post were definitely focused toward their effect on you rather than your victim. 

 I do not agree with your  attacks on polygraph but I recognize and appreciate your accomplishments in treatment. 

Sancho Panza

Quote:


Until your latest post I had yet to read anything from you or about you other than you said you are a police officer, I think in Connecticut and your position on Polygraph which I believe is somewhat skewed by a bad experience. 10 years puts you well past the "I'm gonna be a cop until I can find a job" group. Law Enforcement is a respectable profession and I think that anyone who is willing to strap on a gun and a badge and place themselves physically between Society and those that seek to do it harm is worthy of respect. Would you agree? 

You are rigid and unreasonable in your contention that polygraph is worthless because it has an error rate. Have you ever had or seen a misfire on the range? Was the misfire caused by the error rate of the ammunition manufacturer? Was it caused by the error rate of the firearm manufacturer? Was it caused by the error rate of the operator who failed to perform some necessary function to reduce the error rate? Are you following your standard of it’s worthless unless it’s 100%? Have you stopped carrying a sidearm? Have you ever junked a car because the battery’s error rate reared it’s ugly head or routinely toss all 4 tires because 1 had a flat? Do you have children? Do you disown them if they get a C on their report card? After all a C approximates 70% accuracy or conversely a 30% error rate. Are you aware of anyone who ever took a TB screen that indicated positive and had to go take a more specific test only to find out the did not have TB? Should we ban TB screening?

Do some of these analogies seem silly to you? No more silly than your contention that polygraph has to be 100% or worthless. Any research scientist would laugh at that position or at least shake his head and chuckle to himself. 

If you want to argue that polygraph accuracy rates need to improve, I’ll agree with you. There is always room for improvement.  If you want to take an opposing position as to whether polygraph should be used, we can do that. But if you want to be respected, you need to reconsider your 100% or worthless position. It doesn’t pass the silly test.

Excuse me, but this is what you have said regarding the error rate of polygraph

This means it is logical to conclude that there is a chance (however small or large you believe it to be) that a truthful person could be deemed deceptive on their polygraph exam.  This is the crucial point that renders the polygraph worthless. … 
Polygraph supporters would have you believe that their admission of less-than-complete accuracy subsumes false positives along with false negatives, and that there is no substantive difference between the two.  That is simply not true.  Just as with the fictional medical test for the XYZ disease, once the possibility of a false positive exists, the ability to draw any conclusions from a positive or a negative test result no longer exists. July 31st 2007

However, when you add in the false-positive rate the polygraph, as you have discovered, becomes worthless. April 27 2007

The false-positive rate for polygraphs is disputed, of course.  Supporters of the polygraph say it is very low, while people like me believe it is very high.  I know of no one who asserts that it doesn’t exist.  And the false-positive rate is what, in my opinion, renders the polygraph worthless as a scientific test  April 25 2006.

Once you acknowledge that false positives exist I believe it renders the entire polygraph process worthless.  This is a completely different issue than the accuracy of a polygraph. ….
However, once the possibility of a false positive comes up, all results become meaningless.
April 1 2006

In my opinion, what renders the polygraph utterly worthless is not that it and its operator fail to detect 100% of the deceptive subjects.  What renders the polygraph worthless is that in addition to failing to detect 100% of the deceptive subjects, it also erroneously “fails” or labels as deceptive a certain percentage of truthful subjects.  October 25 2005

However, the actual accuracy of the polygraph, which includes an unknown false-positive rate, renders it worthless.   Oct 23 2005

Anything less than 100% accuracy in the truthful vs. deceptive assessment is worthless August 3 2005

But as soon as you allow for even the most remote possibility that a subject can tell the absolute truth and still be judged to have "failed" the test, in my opinion the entire test process instantly becomes virtually worthless.  Actually, it's worse than worthless, because people and governmental agencies will still rely on it even though it generates data which can only be considered useless….
If polygraph "tests" were fifty percent accurate at detecting actual falsehoods (not just at measuring physiological changes in one's body, but at actually detecting deception) and also had a ZERO percent chance of rendering a false positive, then I would be more willing to support it.  June 17, 2005

Now that we have established that you think that polygraph is worthless if it has a false positive rate. Let’s talk about error rate. Error rate is a combination of 2 types of errors Type I errors, False Positive Error, and Type II, False Negative Error. Both exist in any scientific process. You statisticians correct me if I have this backwards I haven’t had a statistics class in over 30 years. Now let’s look at your example from July of 2007,

You Wrote “Let’s assume that a medical test exists for the XYZ disease, but this test is only successful at detecting the presence of the disease about 75% of the time.  The other 25% of the time, the test will not be positive, even if the subject does in fact have the XYZ disease.  Some people would conclude that the test is useful, even though it is not 100% accurate.

However, there is some crucial data missing.  In order to determine if the test for the XYZ disease is actually useful, we would have to know if it ever showed a positive test result for a person that did not have the XYZ disease.  
If the test never showed a positive result for a subject that did not have the XYZ disease, then it is indeed a useful test.  It is useful because after the test is completed the doctor (and the patient) may draw a definite conclusion at least part of the time.  If the test result is positive the doctor could conclude with 100% accuracy that the patient is suffering from the XYZ disease.  Negative test results would be less conclusive, since the doctor would not be able to rule out the presence of the disease.  

However, if the test sometimes showed a positive result for the presence of the XYZ disease when the disease was not actually present, the utility of that test would be zero. It wouldn’t matter if this occurred in 1% of the tests or in 99% of the tests; the mere possibility of a false positive is sufficient. It would be a useless test because no matter what the result, there would be no legitimate conclusions that could be drawn from the test data.  A positive result would mean that the person has the XYZ disease or that the test is a false positive.  A negative result means that the person doesn’t have the disease or that this is part of the percentage of cases where the result will be negative even though the disease is present.”


I decided to use this example because your flawed reasoning conflicts with what most people know about the TB skin test. This particular test has a false positive rate that fluctuates between 10% and 70% depending on the exposure and vaccination history. If you were to go tomorrow and take this test and come back a few days later with a positive result. NO ONE would assume you have TB, They would just ask you to take a more specific test. 
In screening tests whether they are TB or Pre-employment polygraph there are certainly steps that you can take to reduce the false positive rate, but the unavoidable truth is that if you decrease the false positive rate, you increase the false negative rate.  In the TB skin test in order to reduce the number of false positives you run a significant risk of failure to diagnose someone that really has the disease. So the consequences of a False Positive you have to take another test. Consequence of a False Negative, you die a horrible death. Where exactly would you place the error rate if you had to choose? 

Requiring that polygraphers construct a test that would reduce the false positive rate to 1% would significantly increase the false negative rate allowing unacceptable candidates to pass through. 

I would submit that the consequences of your alleged false positives are that you had to apply a couple of more places for a job. Conversely if your polygraph had been a False Negative and you were actually an undesirable person for Law Enforcement, the consequences would involve pinning a badge and gun on the wrong guy.  If you are the guy doing the hiring you would probably be willing to miss a few good candidates in order to protect your agency from letting a bad apple make it through. Face it. Those pre-employment tests you took weren’t for you. They were for your agency. 

As to your concern that you aren’t receiving sufficient respect and civility, that is certainly my error.  In my defense, I would like to say that in my experience most police officers are self actualizing and thick skinned. In fact, most mature, stable people are. I have respectfully acknowledged your position and your commitment to service. What else should I do to salve your injured feelings?

Sancho Panza
PS Assuming you actually told the truth on all 4 tests and even if you were a "false positive" on three out of 4 times you took the test, I don't think that is statistically sufficient to claim a 75% false positive rate due to uncontrolled variables. I think all you have done is claimed/cited 3 examples of an unquantified false positive rate.   Once again  Statisticians correct me if I am wrong, it's been a long time since high school. 
SP

Delving through your old posts took about five minutes to find the quotes that were used in my post. It wasn't a matter of hoping they would be there because based on the nature of your arguments I was pretty confident as to what I would find. 

At the risk of sounding condescending, I would humbly offer that you are mistaken as to what the phrases "false positive rate" and accuracy rate mean. To put it very simply, accuracy rate means that which remains after the error rate is removed. In other words accuracy rate is the converse of error rate. [Accuracy rate plus error rate equals 100%] You have confused the term accuracy with validity, which is the term given to describe whether or not a process actually measures what it purports to measure.

If your most recent comments concerning the intent of your XYZ analogy are correct then you shouldn't have used the phrase "However, if the test sometimes showed a positive result for the presence of the XYZ disease when the disease was not actually present, the utility of that test would be zero." in your post.   Your subsequent posts were certainly ample proof that you were attempting to hold polygraph to an illogical and unreasonable standard of "Zero false positive or worthless"

When I quoted your posts, I wasn't responding to your opinion at all, I was responding to your declarative statement "I have never said that since polygraph testing is worthless because it is not 100% accurate." If I had just used the words "yes you did say that" you would have responded with something along the lines of "No I didn't" and we could have proceeded with point/counterpoint ad nauseum. By responding to you with your own words that contradict your declarative statement we don't have to be bothered by whether or not you said something, we can move on. You can restate your point of view as often as you like. You can change it if you like, but you shouldn't deny it when proof exists to the contrary. Pointing out that you make contradictory statements is not argumentum ad hominum. You always seem to fall back on that accusation whenever someone is critical of your logic. You accused me of using a straw man argument which means that I misrepresented your position. I simply pointed out that #1. I did not misrepresent your position and #2. Your position uses flawed logic by the use of analogy. In order for the “straw man” accusation to succeed I would have to fail in my argument that a zero false positive rate is an illogical and unreasonable standard and that you have taken the position that “polygraph testing is worthless because it is not 100% accurate”.  I submit that the TB skin test analogy establishes my argument that zero false positive is illogical and unreasonable and that your own words establish that my comments regarding your position are accurate. 

Of course I respond to you differently than I do sex-offenders. If you went to a call at a mental health facility would you interact with the patients the same way you would with the doctors, I expect Sex-Offenders to act like the broken toys they are. When they show some signs that they are moving along with repairs, I think it is important to acknowledge and recognize their progress. Think about the first time one of your kids colored a whole page “inside the lines” did you make a big deal out of it? Did you hang it on the refrigerator?  If you didn’t you should have. But if you had a college student home for the weekend and they colored a whole page “inside the lines” I don’t think you would or should show the same reaction. 

Now if you would care to point out some discourteous statement that I have made to you, I will certainly look at it. If I have committed some social faux pax, I am a big enough boy to acknowledge and apologize if it is called for. But before you wave your 10 years of dedicated respected law enforcement experience (which I have already respectfully acknowledged) in my face one more time, I feel the need to inform you that I have roughly three times the years in law enforcement you claim to have and at my retirement ceremony, the only uniform gear I wore that didn’t have seniority on you was my boots and trousers.  Now if you want to swap war stories and “been there done that’s” we should probably find another forum because I would bet that we have both seen things that would make the majority of the people on this forum lose their lunch and that is not  what this board is about. 

Sancho Panza