As controversial as the use of polygraphs may be, there are for all intents and purposes only two websites with public forums devoted to the discussion of polygraph issues:
PolygraphPlace.com (a for-profit, commercial website operated by a polygraph examiner) and
AntiPolygraph.org (a not-for-profit, public interest website). A comparison between these two forums, both of which have been on-line for roughly eight years, offers an object lesson in the effects of censorship, as the former is censored, and the latter is not. The bottom line up front:
the uncensored forum has roughly 6.5 times as many public posts as the censored one. The
PolygraphPlace.com message board was
opened on 19 November 1999 and has been in continuous operation since then. Its moderators include Dr. Louis Rovner, a polygraph examiner with a Ph.D. in psychology. Introducing the forum, he wrote:
Quote:Hello. My name is Louis Rovner and I'll be your moderator for this forum. Please post any and all of your ideas, comments and questions. Anyone who visits the board will have the opportunity to respond to your messages. In addition, I'll do my best to answer any questions or bring them to the attention of other experts.
I sincerely hope you find this board interesting and useful.
Although Rovner claimed that "anyone who visits the board will have the opportunity to respond to your questions," this was never true of the PolygraphPlace.com message board. In fact, courteous, on-topic replies by polygraph critics have been routinely deleted and those posting them (including myself and Dr. Drew Richardson) have been banned.
In the more than eight years that the PolygraphPlace.com message board has been on-line, some 4,579 posts have been made to the public section of that forum. (The board also has a private forum that is open to polygraph examiners only. It has some 7,789 posts. They must have a lot to talk about that they don't want the public to know.)
By contrast, the
AntiPolygraph.org message board, which
opened on 29 September 2000, has been uncensored from the start. All points of view are welcome, and no one has been banned for voicing views in support of polygraphy. We don't fear the thoughts of those with whom we disagree. We welcome them.
The result: although the AntiPolygraph.org message board has been on-line nearly a year less than the PolygraphPlace.com message board, we have now have close to 30,000 posts (
22,919 29,919 at the time of writing), or roughly 6.5 times as many posts as PolygraphPlace.com has on its public forum. The difference in the liveliness of the discussion and debate is as stark as the difference between West and East Berlin before the wall came down.