The chances may be good, as sharing of records is common. You might check with the department in that major city in Tennessee and ask how long they maintain records of polygraph examinations. You may also be entitled by law to obtain a copy of the polygrapher's report. Look into it.

To protect yourself in the future, read The Lie Behind the Lie Detector.

Last modification: George Maschke - 02/26/01 at 10:39:23

notsurewhattodo,

No, polygraphs are not accurate. Polygraphy has no scientific basis, and the results are without diagnostic value. I cannot advise you whether to believe the child or the relative, but polygraph results should not influence your consideration of the likelihoods involved.

Here is what the National Academy of Sciences says about the accuracy of the polygraph:

"Notwithstanding the limitations of the quality of the empirical research and the limited ability to generalize to real-world settings, we conclude that in populations of examinees such as those represented in the polygraph research literature, untrained in countermeasures, specific-incident polygraph tests for event-specific investigations can discriminate lying from truth telling at rates well above chance, though well below perfection."  (My underlining)

Note they say "specific incident" not "single issue".  There is probably a difference.  In this case, presumably, that it has been determined (by a professional qualified to make such a determination) that the child has actually been molested.

TC

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Who is upset?  And polygraphers routinely DO claim to be nearly perfect, with bogus claims of 98% accuracy.

GM said the polygraph is "not accurate", Pailryder claimed "very accurate" (with caveats and specified "single issue" polygraphs).  I provided a quote from the NAS report which concludes "Well above chance, far from perfection".   The person asking the original question (whether somebody suspected of child abuse should be believed simply because they passed a polygraph) deserves to know what one of the nation's top scientific body's conclusion on polygraph accuracy.

Like I said above, the standard claim from polygraphers is 98% accuracy, which certainly exceeds the NAS report's conclusion.   So which is it?  Are polygraphers lying or is the NAS wrong?  Is polygraph accuracy near perfect (98%), or "significantly above chance"?  Say 65% maybe.  Big difference, especially when accusing somebody of something as serious as child molestation.   

And there is still the matter of "single issue" versus "SPECIFIC incident".  Is there a difference?  Specific incident would seem to imply a crime has definitely been committed.  Single issue, would seem to imply something a bit less (eg. funds MAY be missing, a child has claims to have been molested...etc.).  The NAS report used the phrase "specific incident" when making the "significantly above chance" estimate of accuracy.

TC 

P.S.  As for employment polygraphs, well, the NAS report's estimate of accuracy was even lower:

"almost a century of research in scientific psychology and physiology provides little basis for the expectation that a polygraph test could have extremely high accuracy" (p. 212). 

"[the polygraph's] accuracy in distinguishing actual or potential security violators from innocent test takers is insufficient to justify reliance on its use in employee security screening in federal agencies."

This despite years of lying and outright fabrication by agencies using the polygraph to screen employees.

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They why do polygraphers (including Mr. Trimarco) continue to tout this figure?

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The NAS must not have been too impressed with those studies as they didn't find the polygraph to be anywhere near 90-95% accurate.  They claimed most so-called studies out there lacked "scientific rigor".  Despite claims by the APA that there are thousands of studies showing high polygraph accuracy,  the NAS concluded there was a lack of quality research.  

TC