Barry_C wrote on Jan 4
th, 2008 at 2:05am:
I've said it before, but I think this site is visited by more examiners than the general public. My fear is that some honest people are getting themselves into trouble by trying things suggested by some here.
Barry, the solution to bad information isn't less information, it's more information. If the polygraph community was really concerned with making sure people have accurate information about the polygraph all they'd have to do is provide it. That they don't, even when it's obvious that it leads to many people coming here, indicates that you don't want people to have good information, you want them to be ignorant.
And that is a further piece of evidence in support of my hypothesis that the polygraph doesn't work as well on people who know how it works and that the deception used by polygraphers (you know what I'm talking about) is necessary to the production of results that one can have confidence in. There is no evidence to support your explanation that the deception is used to... Uh... actually, you've never even pretended to explain what the deception is used for. You just want blind trust that there is a good reason and if we'd just shut up and leave the professionals (conveniently, you) to handle things, everything will be fine.
Do you deny that there is a good
prima facie case that the deception is needed to produce accurate results? Oops, I've asked a clear yes or no question; no way that gets answered with anything but B.S.--breathtaking sophistry.
P.S. This idea could probably be enlarged profitably in another post, but compare the polygraph community's response to it's critics with, for instance, biologists and how they have responded to their creationist opponents. There's no creationist argument that hasn't been answered, usually countless times, in not only books, articles, and multiple places on the internet--all of them easily accessible and easy for scientists to point people to. Furthermore, there are several very excellent websites, to say nothing of many great books, that explain evolutionary biology to nonscientists of varying degrees of sophistication. The truth is on their side and they want to get it out there to defeat what is, frankly, psuedoscience (and bad theology too).
But polygraphers, contrariwise, though also claiming to have the truth about a controversial matter, don't even make the slightest attempt to explain their practice to those not a part of their guild. Why? Instead of countering their critics' arguments (which, presumably, they could do, being in the right) they try to censor them and attack those who disagree. Why? Just demonstrate how foolish the critics are, if indeed they are foolish, and let the adults make up their own minds.
Just tell us why you use the deception, Barry. That's all I'm asking and all I've been asking. Until you provide a reasonable explanation, it will be rational for someone like myself to conclude that the deception is probably used to create the correct psychophysiological reactions in the test subject.