posted 10-16-2006 10:37 PM            

I spent 5 1/2 painful hours in court today, under service to testify, though I did not, on a probation revocation case for which the polygraph examiner is currently incarcerated for kidnapping charges - ARGH...

It's a case for which I did a psychosexual risk evaluation 2 years ago - and the probation officer/treatment provider/polygraph examiner did not follow my recommendations at all. The court agreed today with the accuracy of my clinical findings and recomendations. It was both fascinating and painful to watch. After the court recessed, the judge called me personally to his chambers to discuss things a bit more. This was very gratifying, as he had heard me two years ago at training sessions at our state's judicial traniing confernence, and en benc (or something close to that spelling). The judge is a former law enforcement officer, who told me about failing a couple police screening polygraphs on theft questions (aparently discussed doing side jobs with his employer's tools while employed in construction), and then went on to become a defense attorney and judge. (Why are so many judges former defense attorneys?)

Bottom line...

Impressions last a long time - in the media, among our examinees, and with the courts.

Perhaps (hopefully) this may lead to an opportunity to present at the state judicial conference again.

In other training realms, I answered an 18 hour notice to do a four hour class in forensic assessment at the University of Denver School of Professional Psychology (Psy.D.) program. Thanksfully, I happened to have material from a half-day workshop that I recent provided for our state court administrator's office.

I don't profess to be an sort of foremost expert, but I think one answer to this sort of media tripe is to be prepared and willing to offer accurate, credible, empirically grounded, and ethically sound information regarding our science and field practices. It helps a lot to have a few things prepared in advance, and I've found that smart well-educated professionals appreciate when we teach them about science vs. simply selling them confidence.

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 10-17-2006 03:05 PM         

It appears as though you have connect (if you will) to several areas of the polygraph professsion as well as the academic/research professions, so please allow me to pose a very broad, yet important, question: Where do you see polygraph in ,say, ten years from now? For example, do you foresee polygraph being replaced with other technology? Do believe our current system will be made better with different formats, scoring methods, or a fourth component?

I think many examiners often ask themselves this very question. I often ask this question, and wonder if there's a true answer to this question. Some will say that polygraph has been around for many years, and will likely never be completely replaced. I, for one, totally disagree with that train of thought. The information age has created a completely new set of challenges for polygraph, and those challenges are getting bigger each day. I'm just wondering if we're up to the challenges. If we chose to ignore the problems that our profession faces, the polygraph may one day become a relic from days past.

Looking forward to your response.

posted 10-17-2006 03:25 PM            

As far as a fourth channel goes, it's been around for a long time. The polygraph world has just failed to use it. (I use four components, the "extra" being the finger PLE.)

There is some research to show skin temperature might be helpful too, but it's a little early for that one.

Will extra channels make polygraph better? Well, more data is generally a good thing, so yes. Will it revolutionize the profession? I doubt it. We get 85 to 96% accuracy as it is. It will be tough to add much to that, but every little bit helps.

I think we need to teach people how to do more with what we've got already. There is a lot of variance in opinions at times - all when examiners are looking at the same set of data. That is not a good thing.

In the end, polygraph may not look the same, but it may very well still be "polygraph." If we were to all wake up in a hundred years, we just wouldn't recognize it. Remember that we look at "symptoms." There's technology out there that will likely get us straight to the source, but again, who knows?

posted 10-17-2006 05:22 PM         

I'm not familiar with the PLE, but I do feel that, in the future, brain wave technology, facial thermal imagery, or science only knows what else will be added as a fourth component. What I'm referring to is something that will take more of the sujectivity out of the scoring criteria - namely the pneumos.

I'm also hoping that format changes will also allow a more straight forward approach, rather than the psycological wrangling that now experience from time to time.

I suppose I'm just frustrated with the slow pace of change. Excuse my venting. I've been viewing you know who's site again.....

posted 10-17-2006 10:02 PM            

I sure wish I knew where polygraph would be in 10 years. Better yet, I wish I knew where the stock market will be.

A agree with both your concerns and Barry's answer.

New and emerging technologies are always interesting, but I believe our field is hampered by proprietary interests. People with new ideas want to completely replace polygraph with CVSA or brain-wave. It seems to me that it would be more responsible science to generalize and dissemintate knew and old knowledge. We waste a lot of effort with needless arm-wrestling.

There are others who read this board who certainly know much more than I about the long-game of the polygraph profession.

No problem waiting Barry, I'm looking forward to seeing it. I haven't done anything with the ftp space - I had to solve some problems with my son's website.

Plus, I've been distracted by courtroom and other drama.

You can see one of our own on the America's Most Wanted website.

In the meantime I've been working on non-parametric algorithms to calculate the significance of handscored data. I sent you a spreadsheet with some interesting things. I included a Levene test to verify the paramentric (t-test) assumption of equal variance amoung relevant and comparision questions. Plus, I added a Q-Q Plot to evaluate normalcy. I'd prefer a test of normalcy, and I can use the Shapiro-Wilk test in SPSS. However, I don't really understand the Shapiro-Wilk and related tests well enough to hand code them into and Excell spreadsheet. The Quantile plot is actually more informative than normalcy tests, that seem to all have their limitations and sensitivities to certain types of non-normalcy.

You can play with results using non-parametric sign-tests, Wilcoxon signed ranks, Mann-Whitney rank sums, and Kruskal-Wallis tests. The Mann-Whitney is the standard and versatile test, but I might be able to do something with the Kruskal-Wallis. The Sign test is not as powerful and the Wilcoxon not as versatile, but when you see a significant result with those less robust test its somewhat impressive. So, I'm presently adding another worksheet to parse the results of individual relevant questions, again from hand-scored (3 or 7 position data) using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney. This may replace the parametric hypothesis test for small samples. I think I'm not far from justifying the normalcy of the rank data, though those friggin tied-ranks does a bit of meaningless curvature to the normal plot (I hate tied ranks, but I understand why they are used - they improve the power of the algorithm.) Its interesting to see the results with both methods. Once its set up you just enter the handscored data for the RQs and thats it.

I also added cells for your PLE, and weighted it at .25. I'm not sure that's right, but I heard Don Krapohl at APA say it added about 5 percent. Common wisdom tells us that the practical contribution or meaning is the square of the correlation coefficient. This can be changed quite easily.

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 10-17-2006 11:56 PM            

I agree with much of what has been already stated by Barry and Ray.

Post 9/11 there has been an influx of “the search for the holy grail” for the detection of deception.

I believe it was Rosenfeld who pointed out that those other novel techniques that are being looked at have much of the same by way of problems. Specifically, they just cannot isolate or define that which they are measuring.

In a previous thread, the issue of incremental validity and utility was discussed. This will most certainly play a roll in the decision to further develop and implement different instrumentation/techniques in the future. For example, let us say that fMRI produces a correct decision 80-85% of the time and costs approximately $1500. The polygraph in comparison produces better results and is less expensive. What if there was a 1% increase in correct decisions but the ability to get conclusive decisions was reduced by 35%. Ultimately the consumer will decide these issues (hopefully with educated aid in their decision process).

Someone should start a new topic on this though, as it is a little off the subject.

posted 10-18-2006 08:13 AM            

Agreed. I'd prefer the term Grand-Poo-Bah, but the judge wouldn't qualify me like that, and I think the opposing counsel was a little confused.

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 10-20-2006 07:09 PM            

Its hard to argue with that.

I hope you never write for the other side.

r.

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 10-21-2006 10:13 AM         

[This message has been edited by stat (edited 10-21-2006).]

posted 10-21-2006 05:16 PM            

As an aside, I teach college part time, and I can tell you people don't know how to research much of anything these days. If they can find someone to do the work for them (i.e., cheating), they will. Sometimes I get sucked into doing that here; other times, I don't. Sometimes it's hard to draw the line between what is teaching and what is really not helping anyone do anything but major in laziness.

posted 10-21-2006 09:18 PM         

[This message has been edited by stat (edited 10-21-2006).]

posted 10-22-2006 07:06 PM            

quote:

---

There is a general paranoia concerning any vocal in-house polygraph dessenters ---in that there is a general assumption that such negativity must come from "the other side." This, I find to be an insult to the craft (although not personally insulting)---because one doesn't need an axe to be critical----

---

stat,

I certainly meant no such insult, and thought no such thing about your rant. My apologies if it seemed so.

quote:

---

I find the anti crowd to be lower than !#&$---mainly because I test sex offenders who (many of whom)are basically in countermeasures training---and the anti-crowd must know that our kids are in danger due to the "anti-school" of cm's.

---

I've been testing a few offenders, whose therapist has them attend a "failed-polygraph group" where they do who-knows-what. We've tried to put a stop to it, but to no avail. When I ask the offenders, they tell me they do things like learning meditation to stay calm, learning not react to test questions with inappropriate emotions. Some say they're not sure what they do. Others report that its simply a form of spanking (cost and inconvenience) for being bad - it doesn't actually have much of anything to do with the problem, and doesn't really fix anything at all.

I have a fun looking test a couple days ago, in a guy whose been in treatment since 1991. About four or so years ago, I took a couple of hundred pages of printed web pages away from him (made him go home and get it) - from the old no-polygraph, stop-polygraph, and maschke's early e-book. He stopped goofing around for a while - but now he's back at it again.

That therapist has never watched or observed a polygraph, let alone ever been subject to a polygraph test. He never calls me to talk about any of the difficulties with some clients. With other programs I staff and consult on every single case before and after testing.

In larger, conveyor belt programs, therapists don't really know their clients. With 2-3 hours every few to six months, I actually spend more time one-to-one with his clients than he does. Many of the people are not healthy, and would really benefit from psychotherapy.

One sex offender (adult) was a student at Columbine High School on 4/20/99. Within a year he had assaulted his mother with a knife and sexually assaulted his sister. I met with him again with the week after our Bailey school shooting. As I always do, I asked him how he's doing and he said it had been a weird week. I asked if he meant about the school stuff and he just about came unglued with emotion. So I sent him home with some instructions to schedule some therapy sessions, and then called the therapist and gave the same instructions.

Another case, with a poly-substance abusing/self-medicating generalized anxiety disordered sex offender who was having a lot of trouble doing anything - work, treatment, polygraphs, etc. His medications we're being administered by a generaly practicioner, not a psychiatrist, and had not been reviewed in over two years. They kept sending him back every month, and I kept interrogating him for admissions, despite my instructions to get his meds checked. After the third test, it was apparent that his mental health was deteriorating, so I kicked him out and had to insist that his team require him to see a psychiatrist before I could test him again. My point is that we can count on sex offenders to be dangerous - but professionals have no excuse for negligence, yet they do things and neglect to do things that I believe directly affect community safety. Known sex offenders walking around town loaded up with painful emotions, or unstable mental health disorders are at risk. It's strange to me that a polygraph examiner has to point these things out, and that therapists don't notice these things as long as they show up for group, pay their bill, and don't act stupid or disruptive.

It's like waiting until the train wrecks, before we think about greasing the axles.

OK, now I'm ranting.

Peace,

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)

posted 10-23-2006 02:19 AM            

There is more bad news about those youthful offenders.

The common social(ist)-worker view is that youth is an asset or protective factor. While that may be true (or at least we may choose to remain optimistic about that), the criminology, recidivism, and risk prediction literature seems to consistently suggest that earlier age of onset is an aggravating risk factor for increased rates of all kinds of recidivism and other problems as an adult. Basically, it seems that the younger they get started the more sexually preoccupied and compulsive they are - both known risk factors. There are obvious and strong corellations between early exposure to things like pornography and violent disregard for others and sexual offending - duh!

Please don't get me wrong, I work with quite a few therapists who are very good. I just think that most aren't really all that interested in their clients. The best programs that I work with know where ever client is at any momement - except of course the runaways, and they get those because they are the best at working with stubborn offenders.

This illustrates a kind of paradox (and there are a few in this work), that the best programs sometimes have the highest failure rates - because they watch their offenders more closely. Think about it, don't-ask-don't-tell yields don't-notice-until-it's-too-late (which means a new victim). So, better treatment programs will tend to make a bigger deal out of less serious problems.

I have no problems with a general practicioner monitoring psych meds - as long as its working. But if its obvious that its not working, then someone should make a referral. Most modern neuroleptics, (including, Zyprexa, Reperidone, and Seroquel)don't have the same risk of tardive dyskinesia (secondary tic disorders), and are not as sedating as the older anti-psychotics (includign Haldol/haloperidol, the infamous sedating Thorazine, and Thioridazine/Mellaril and others). I have a (now) funny personal experience with Thorazine, when an autistic adult (allergic to wheat/gluten) broke an almost full 1000 ml. bottle of liquid Thorazine (some 20 or so years ago) and I and a co-worker mopped it up with a towell - without rubber gloves or breathing masks.

I would have a hard time writing, in a polygraph examination report, that someone who requires multiple anti-psychotic meds just to get through a school-day or work-day is a "fit subject for the polygraph technique," but I see it all the time. So, its not just the psychotherapists and docs that have their versions of professional irresponsibility.

Always good to hear from you. I think I (and probably other) really appreciate your insights/rants.

r

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"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room."
--(from Dr. Strangelove, 1964)