pailryder wrote on Sep 7^th, 2013 at 10:44am:


Your point is valid; I admit that countermeasures could be used by some with nefarious intentions. 

Dear Mr. Williams,

The rumors of your demise have been  greatly exaggerated (Gee, did someone like Mark Twain say that already?).

An awful trickbag that this sticky-wicket has been caught in. Admit that countermeasures exist and by default, admit that the test can be beaten. Try to claim that "countermeasures" can be detected seems counterproductive in the fact that using them would be useless and need no defense or mention. 

The failure ratio of new applicants is approaching 70% for applications requiring clearances with letters.  My goodness, we are throwing away seven out of ten applicants without even starting a background check.

The Emperor does not have to worry about not having any clothes because there are not people to witness and watch the parade!

The only reason that this is not a problem is because the government is not hiring at this point.

The trust in our government is at an all time low. The blind trust placed in a polygraph examination is being questioned.  The charade is difficult to justify.

Wow, hard to think that the agencies still have such blind trust in this gizmo.  I guess we need more security breaches to prove that the polygraph will not prevent the next leak.

Regards.

Aunty Agony

Please cite a specific post where I made unsupported assertions.

quickfix wrote on Sep 8^th, 2013 at 1:48pm:



The whole concept of the polygraph being used as a "lie detector" is "nothing more than a carny sideshow"!  This is an excerpt from my book, FROM COP TO CRUSADER:  THE STORY OF MY FIGHT AGAINST THE DANGEROUS MYTH OF "LIE DETECTION".

"I had studied the history of the men who created this insidious machine known as a "lie detector"; John Larson and Leonarde Keeler. Both of these men also suffered as a direct result of their association with and use of the so-called lie detector. John Larson, a serious scholar with a PhD in science, is credited with being the inventor of the “lie detector". He spent many years trying to prove 
that the polygraph was scientifically valid as a method to detect deception. He was unsuccessful in doing that; and as a result, at the end of his life he went mad and fell into a deep state of despair. 

Just before he died, Larson is quoted as saying, “Beyond my expectation, thru uncontrollable factors, this scientific investigation became for practical purposes a Frankenstein’s monster, which I have spent over forty years in combating.” Leonarde Keeler, Larson’s protégé, and self proclaimed inventor of the first polygraph machine was later despised by Larson because he considered Keeler to be a shameless self promoter who had turned the polygraph into a carnival sideshow. Larson, who did not want to the polygraph to be widely used until he had tested it and proved that it was scientifically valid and reliable, was troubled by Keeler’s unsupported claims that the polygraph could detect deception. In fact, near the end of his life, Larson was writing a book that he claimed would expose Keeler as a thief and a liar who had stolen the ideas of others, and put his name on a polygraph machine that he had not created. He planned to expose Keeler as con man who had turned the polygraph into a carnival sideshow, and a shameless self promoter who promoted his Keeler polygraph machine on “cheese-cake type news interviews”."

pailryder wrote on Sep 7^th, 2013 at 10:44am:

Pailryder, here is an example of your argument-like noise. It was a total dismissal of my previous point without any kind of counter-argument; it was sophomoric.

pailryder wrote on Sep 9^th, 2013 at 11:07am:

This is pure emotional speculation. A similar assertion could be made that if a sex offender feels confident that he will not be falsely accused of being a liar, he would be more positive about his treatment. Also, are drug smugglers really lining up to infiltrate the CBP? If the polygraph is indeed the panacea for crime, why not use it in all cases? Heck, maybe the NSA could just polygraph us all?

Aunty Agony wrote on Sep 9^th, 2013 at 3:32pm:


But then again, could they really know who is using countermeasures? Oh my, such a vexing conundrum it is...  

PAILFACE says: "No one thinks of polygraph as a panacea to stop all crime, but over time it has proven to be an effective tool when properly used."

If that isn't a prime example of doublespeak, I've never seen it!  What does this mean? "over time it has proven to be an effective tool when properly used".  I can see that the polygraph is an "effective tool", if by "tool" you mean a psychological billy club that will coerce a person into confessing.  But how can something that is proven to be less than 50% accurate be "properly used"? 

Oh, I almost forgot your favorite part!  I know how you love your emoticons PAILFACE - here you go little buddy...