Can the polygraphers on this board come clean for a moment?  What reward do you all get when you obtain a signed confession or disqualifying admission from a subject?   

Do you get a pay raise, bonus, promotion opportunity, or just bragging rights in the office?

Quote:

It is extremely immoral and unethical to advance in your career by ruining the careers of others.

Of course, coercing confessions is what it's all about. Take this comment from Don Grubin in an article for The Guardian a few years back:

Grubin believes the polygraph reveals the importance of a question to the individual under test, its emotional significance, and the cognitive work required if they lie when answering. “All of that ends up being seen in the physiological response,” he says. “It’s not detecting lies, and shouldn’t be thought of as a lie detector. It is an indicator of the salience of the question and the cognitive processing associated with it. It also encourages disclosures for reasons we don’t understand, and in that respect it might be thought of as a truth facilitator. In the end, test outcome and disclosure are both important, and complementary.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/mar/05/there-is-no-bomb-what-i-learned-...

If the ultimate goal is to produce "disclosures," it would make sense that the more "disclosures" a polygraph operator obtains, the more accolades (bonuses, promotions, letters of commendation, etc.) they would receive. 

I made several disclosures during my five attempts at the polygraph "test," but none were ever deemed damaging enough.

My career and reputation were destroyed by the Insider Threat Program at the Defense Intelligence Agency because I simply couldn't "successfully complete" the Polygraph Credibility Assessment.

Operating directly under the National Counterintelligence Executive, the Insider Threat Program's mission is to eliminate threats and catch spies. Thanks to the polygraph, brother, business is good.

In a document that I was able to obtain through discovery, the Insider Threat Program Coordinator, Steven D. McIntosh, wrote the attached memorandum. The last paragraph is where he sings the praises of his team. Without a doubt, I was one of those 11 where his team took credit for the identification and/or resolution of a CI matter in 2012. Also, notice how the number jumped to 38 in 2013. 

My reward is the satisfaction of a job well done.

The ones who "work well" with offender treatment programs seem to get a lot more referrals for business as a reward. Why would a treatment provider want you to pass through quickly, versus not, where languishing in the system turns you into a little cash cow for the polygraph cottage industry and the provider? 

Fail an exam (being generous here calling it an "exam") and what happens? Automatic enrollment into a failed polygraph module that lasts 4 weeks or so (on top of whatever other courses the offender is currently taking) so you can work on your issues. Requirement for another test after completing the module (so there's another several hundred dollars for the polygrapher - what's their incentive to pass you?). Plus, court supervision people get to look effective by "consequencing" you for failure, like assigning community service hours.

Even on repeated tests where results are at odds with one another, their reward for a job well done is keeping you in the churn of repeated polygraphs. If you know you have a "client" who is going to be in the system for years (because some states tie the entire term of supervision to the time you have to stay in treatment), why wouldn't a polygrapher and the team keep you in that cycle (at least up until the very end)? It's a payday for everyone, but you.

On the job/applicant screening side, you what? Think you're doing a good job by failing people who were being truthful? Aren't there enough people on this forum claiming to have the same experience/outcome of being labeled as a liar that people aren't wising up to the fact polygraphs are a sham? That's a great government job to have. Who really knows if you're effective or not? There's no way to measure that. On the other side, ever prevent a spy from disclosing secrets? Bueller? Bueller? That's right, never.

"Yet no scientific evidence exists demonstrating that polygraph screening tests, whether administered during the application process or as part of a routine security reinvestigation, have any validity. Studies undertaken for the Department of Defense's Polygraph Institute, which trains FBI polygraphers, reveal that screening tests fail time after time."