Gordon,

I'm on vacation with only occasional Internet access now, but will post my thoughts on the question you raised when I return home at the end of the week.

This occurred some eight years before I became a polygraph examiner.  I do not know what format was used, how many relevant questions there were, or precisely how they were worded.  I know I'm dense, but I fail to see how the test format would determine whether the outcome of the first test was a true or false positive.  One could well argue that the precise wording of the relevant questions is the determining factor.  Conceivably they might have been worded very precisely, specifying "last night" or some such thing.  It is possible they may have included "being taken by force" but they would also need to cover his going voluntarily.  Let's not make it too complicated.  I've given the facts as I understand them to have been; there's no need to read more into the situation.  But feel free to state assumptions and answer on that basis.

Regarding the details of what happened to Chuck, I don't know if Col. L's admonishment was verbal or whether a letter of reprimand went into Chuck's personnel file.  I suspect the former was the more likely.  All that I know is that Chuck continued to work in my section with no apparent repercussions.

I'm not so much interested in a tally of votes "true positive" or "false positive."  The most important thing is the rationale underlying your opinion.

Peace.

Good Morning Gordon,

     Returning to the second issue/question of your scenario, i.e., the advisability of admissions and confessions on the part of Chuck and others facing similar situations….  Before I do, just a word or two about your phrase “dummied up.”  I presume this phrase is not an intentional pejorative, but merely your shorthand for describing one alternative available to Chuck, i.e., a decision not to reveal information based on a rational thought process.  This process is, in fact, not unlike your decision not to fully discuss counter-countermeasures and, of course, may or may not be the correct decision, but is in no way intuitively a dumb decision.  Alright, to the question at hand…

     In general, I would never advise anyone to make post-test admissions or confessions.  By and large, such amounts to nothing but blood in the water in the presence of sharks.  Polygraph examiners laugh amongst themselves about their superiority to used car salesman, the latter only selling automotive lemons with the former priding themselves in selling jail time.  The modus operandi for selling jail time is the elicitation of admissions and confessions and in general the process (a post test interrogation following a deceptive polygraph result) is viewed as successful if and only if a confession/admission is obtained and in general more and more extensive is better than less.  In fact, it has been reported that some polygraph examiners are evaluated by their departments for the number of admissions and confessions following deceptive polygraph results.  Clearly an area of bias the unsuspecting polygraph examinee dare not venture in…To get involved in such a process (either as a guilty or an innocent examinee) is quite risky and fraught with peril.  The guilty examinee who believes that a tidbit of information serves to disguise and defuse and the honest and truthful examinee who seeks to provide a rationale explanation for why an irrational procedure (polygraphy) left him incorrectly branded deceptive are both engaging in unsafe behavior.   

     All of this having been said, I still believe any such decision is really a cost/benefit decision.  There are actually situations where a carefully thought-through admission is appropriate.  Because we do not know many of the details surrounding Chuck and his scenario, it is hard to advise about his specific situation.  It may well have been that he realized several hundred people had seen him on the verboten subway and that this would come to light anyway.  Such a factor might well lead one to do as you claim he did…however, and AS STRONGLY AS I CAN POSSIBLY EMPHASIZE, and as can be testified to by many on this site, independent of such a rationale,  a blush of honesty and good intentions leading to some admission is no guarantee of success through additional polygraph exams, related investigation and the subsequent decision making of authority figures (e.g., hiring decisions, etc.).  Best…

Gordon,

As promised, here are my thoughts on this subject...

As a preliminary matter, I note that Chuck's polygraph interrogations were not "tests" within the scientific meaning of the term. As Professor John J. Furedy of the University of Toronto notes in his article, "The North American Polygraph and Psychophysiology: Disinterested, Uninterested, and Interested Perspectives" (International Journal of Psychophysiology, 21(1996): 2-3):
Quote:

Your description of the polygraphic interrogations to which Chuck was subjected as "tests" is incorrect from a scientific standpoint, and this fundamental conceptual error invites systematic error in analyzing polygraphy.

As Anonymous pointed out, you do not provide enough information regarding the specific relevant question(s) Chuck was asked to say whether the outcome of his first polygraph interrogation was a false positive. If the relevant question was indeed, "Were you in East Berlin?" and Chuck replied, "No" when, in fact, he had been in East Berlin twice (passing through via the subway), then the polygrapher's opinion that Chuck was deceptive with regard to that question was correct, and no false positive occurred. Had the relevant question been "Were you in East Berlin within the past 48 hours" (and Chuck truly had not been there, or at least had no knowledge of having been there), then the polygrapher's opinion that Chuck had been deceptive with regard to that question would have been incorrect: a false positive determination. I think that the importance of the precise wording is obvious here.

You note that after Chuck passed his second polygraph interrogation after he admitted having twice passed under East Berlin via the subway. It should be noted that telling the truth is no guarantee that one will "pass" a polygraph "test." Chuck's admission may or may not have resulted in his passing his second polygraph interrogation. Had the polygrapher opined that Chuck was still being deceptive after his second "test," then his initial admission may have been used as the basis for disciplinary action against him. One cannot determine based on the available evidence whether or not Chuck was better off making the admission he made. (Personally, I think Chuck had an ethical duty to answer the relevant questions regarding his whereabouts truthfully, whether or not it was in his personal interest to do so. He did not, however, have an ethical duty to agree to have his truthfulness assessed based on a pseudoscientific polygraph "test.")

In The Lie Behind the Lie Detector, Gino Scalabrini and I note in Chapter 4 that those submitting to polygraph screening "tests" who contemplate using countermeasures should prepare in advance some innocuous explanation (that cannot be turned into a damaging admission) for any physiological reactions the polygrapher may allege they showed with regard to the relevant questions. But as I observed in my post, "How to Pass the DoD CI-Scope Polygraph," the Department of Defense Polygraph Program report for FY 2000 clearly shows that the only persons who ultimately "failed" their counterintelligence-scope polygraph interrogations in that fiscal year were those who made "substantive admissions." This being the case, it is clearly in the interest of any person facing a DoD counterintelligence-scope polygraph "test" to "dummy up" (to borrow your expression) and make no admissions.

Any member of the U.S. armed forces who is asked/ordered to submit to a polygraph "test" with regard to a specific incident should seek legal counsel from the Judge Advocate General's office.

Anonymous wrote:

Quote:


By "dummied up" I meant pretending not to know something which in fact you do know.  My decision not to discuss how we detect countermeasures was something quite different.  Dummying up is the core of the advice being given to examinees when the examiner is trying to ascertain why a person reacted to a relevant question on the test...was it something truly significant or something minor.   Dummying up may serve the best interests of the person who is holding back information that is truly significant, but I believe it ill serves the person who, like Chuck, is concealing information that is relatively minor.  I will expand on this in my next post to this thread.

Peace.

Quote:


Gordon, I most assuredly realize that the two are quite different. In the case of the polygraph examinee, he has rationally decided not to reveal information about that which exists. In the case of you and counter-countermeasures, you have decided that by being coy (refusing to comment) that you might be able to suggest that something exists when in fact nothing exists (i.e., there currently exists no meaningful and reliable way(s) to detect appropriately applied polygraph countermeasures). This action may well be rational too, for it is the only, albeit weak position/defense available to you.

Till next time...