Odd then that the words “abolition, abolish, abolishing, or abolishment don’t appear in a word search of the NAS Study. Hmmm
Are you now agreeing that they in fact
did not call for the abolition of polygraph screening, only that abolition is the inference you drew from your interpretation of their comments. One would think that such an august body as the National Academy of Sciences, would clearly state what they mean in such a manner as to leave as little as possible open to inference. In short if they wanted it abolished, why didn’t they say so?
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Regarding what you claim to be the AMA’s Position on polygraph, if you have a credible superseding citation to this one, JUST POST IT
Ask, and you shall receive:
Quote:The AMA's Council on Scientific Affairs recommended that the polygraph not be used in pre-employment screening and security clearance (Council on Scientific Affairs. 1986. Polygraph. Journal of the American Medical Association. 256: 1172-1175.).
My link provides the abstract for the very article you are citing. Its odd that if the AMA is taking the position you described that something similar and unequivocal wasn’t mentioned in the abstract. Of course at this point JAMA articles from that time period are not currently available on line while the reconstruct their online archive. I am perfectly willing to accept the abstract which everyone can read as their position on the matter, which is closer to what I have said than your characterization of words we are not capable of reading ourselves.
Quote:I have seen similar allegations that Drew Richardson somehow lacked the intellectual capacity to become a polygraph operator out of the operators’ peanut gallery in the past.
Do you have any information that Drew Richardson ever ran a field polygraph on a criminal case or competed a polygraph internship. A PHD does not automatically bestow polygraph knowledge or skill sets.
Likewise his comments that you provided are so broad and general that they show little specific knowledge of the practical application of polygraph. I will discuss them below.
Quote: Please point out any part where you feel he is incorrect.
Quote: With regard to our criticism of the deception present in the polygraph process as a whole, this, too, is well supported. Do you disagree with anything posted in Drew’s list?
Actually I feel he is incorrect on at least all seven. The reason I say that is the he is talking in broad generalizations and while they may have occurred in isolated polygraph examinations are not necessarily applicable to all examiners or all examinations so using any of those statements as evidence that “Polygraph Examiners” are liars is intentionally misleading but more specifically?
1. Polygraph examiners probably do not explain the autonomic nervous system in exactly the same way a doctor of physiology would explain it. How exactly would you explain the autonomic nervous system to say, a suspected rapist with a ninth grade education who doesn't know the difference between an axon hillock and Axel Rose or Dendrites from Dentyne? Most polygraph examiners that I've heard give a fairly good lay explanation of what happens during a sympatheic activation as it relates to the data collected by the components. I haven't heard them all. Neither has he.
Even examinees with advanced degrees who aren't students of medicine are likely to have a great deal difficulty of following a text book explanation of the process.
2. Neither you or Drew know how all examiners explain the stim test to examinees. Drew may recall how he was initially taught, but all examiners don’t use a stim test an all don’t explain it exactly the same way.
3. How exactly do you believe that examiner’s represent the function of irrelevant questions in a control question test (CQT) polygraph exam
4. Old news. Some recent studies show that the examinees knowledge of the function of comparison questions have little or no effect on the outcome of an examination. Since it doesn’t really matter why do you presume that “Examiners” lie about it.
5. Drew has very little idea about what “examiners” as a group represent about the recognized validity of the CQT (or other exam formats) in a screening application and about what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from the exam at hand. At best he has limited knowledge from whatever examinations he has personally conducted, those he has personally observed and questionable anecdotal comments from people he may have talked to. At best that is probably going to account for a less than hundredth of a percent of the examinations conducted without him.
6. Interrogational themes are a tool used my 99% of criminal investigators regardless of polygraph. If deception during interrogation has received broad acceptance by the courts. Even if it had not; for him to conclude that all polygraph examiners lie during post test interrogations is an overgeneralization unsupportable by data. Which he then attempts to support with more opinion and supposition with his sub points 1 and 2.
7. That’s an opinion and as such really doesn’t prove or establish anything
Quote:Ed, judging by this statement and your earlier reference to the APA “on paper” position statement that polygraph results are not intended to be a sole determining factor in hiring, it seems you have little grasp of how pre-employment polygraphs are actually conducted by federal agencies.
In the roughly eight years that I have been involved with this organization, I have yet to hear of the FBI doing a breakdown of a specific series during a re-test. The select few who are granted a re-test are put through the entire series of questions and “fail” again nearly without exception.
We know that in the 7 years between 1994 and 2001 the FBI ran approximately 27,000 pre-employment polygraph tests. I think it is fair to presume that they have conducted close to that many in the last eight years. Considering that you probably haven’t talk to all of them, How many conversations are you relying upon in order to conclude that they have never run a breakdown test on pre-employment or that at some point in the last 8 years their policy has not changed? Even if we presume, for the sake of argument that you are absolutely correct you are only calling attention to an agency problem not a “Polygraph” problem
Quote:All of our allegations of deception on the part of individual polygraph operators like Ed Gelb have been thoroughly supported (Do you feel that he was not deceptive with regard to his educational credentials?).
My point exactly if you find a deception on the part of a single polygrapher you attempt to tar all with the same brush.
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Gino, and you too George if your reading:
I’m going to leave you with one question. I’m betting I don’t get an answer. I expect you will ignore it entirely or try to change the subject. Here it is any way.
Why haven’t you and George ever told your readers that the ONLY way you will ever be able to prove that your countermeasures actually work in field situations is with the assistance of liars and criminals.?
With regard to field situations, in addition to liars and criminals, plenty of truthful people are also employing countermeasures to protect themselves against false positive outcomes as a result of this unreliable “test.” Thus, we could also prove the effectiveness of countermeasures with their assistance as well.
Regrettably, I don’t think that we are going to have an easy time getting members of any of these three groups to confess.
A better way to test the effectiveness of polygraph countermeasures would be for an operator to step up to the countermeasure challenge prominently featured on the home page of this Web site.
I’m sorry, but you couldn’t be more wrong. A truthful person attempting countermeasures and passing their polygraph test DOES not prove that countermeasures work. It would be impossible to separate those who passed because they told the truth from those who passed because they attempted countermeasures. The only Identifiable subset would be those who attempted countermeasures and were caught. That also assumes that countermeasures even work research cited by NAS establishes that honest people who atempt countermeasures actually decrease their chances of passing a polygraph. If the study is correct, truthful people who attempt countermeasures fail and the NAS also said that it isn't very likely that someone could learn the effective application of countermeasures by reading your book.
The ONLY way to prove in a field situation that countermeasures are an effective way to pass a polygraph is for a liar or criminal to attempt countermeasures, lie on the relevant questions, pass the test, and then confirm that they were lying. So In order for you to prove that countermeasures work in the real world requires a level of cooperation you are unlikely to obtain from people you really shouldn’t believe. You will never be able to effectivly separate a successful countermeasure attempt from a false negative and yet you regularly criticize polygraph reserach. You can't even figure out how to research the stuff you teach in your book.
One of the long held criticisms of polygraph research is that laboratory studies are unable to approximate field conditions with any reliability. The challenge that has been proposed would have the same inherent faults that have been openly criticized on this site.
Instead of talking about polygraphers like they are all exactly the same and do their jobs exactly the same. You need to separate the actions of individuals from "polygraph" as a whole and you also need to separate policy decisions made by hiring authorities from "polygraph" as a whole. "Polygraph" cannot dictate policy or the behavior of individual examiners in a manner that would make "polygraph" responsible for the majority of the criticisms on this board any more than "Medicine" can be held responsible for he behavior of a doctor or the policies of a hospital.