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Posted by pailryder
- May 25, 2008, 08:33 AMnopoly
The Handbook of Polygraph Testing edited by Murray Kleiner is easily found on line and is my best reccomendation.
The Handbook of Polygraph Testing edited by Murray Kleiner is easily found on line and is my best reccomendation.
Posted by George W. Maschke
- May 24, 2008, 11:21 AMQuote from: nopoly4me on May 24, 2008, 09:26 AMIs the National Academy of Sciences report available without editing somewhere online???
The complete text of The Polygraph and Lie Detection is available in HTML format at:
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309084369/html/
Posted by bimmergirl
- May 24, 2008, 09:26 AMIs the National Academy of Sciences report available without editing somewhere online???
Edited to remove malformed quoted text. Please preview before posting. -- AntiPolygraph.org Administrator
Edited to remove malformed quoted text. Please preview before posting. -- AntiPolygraph.org Administrator
Posted by Barry_C
- Dec 19, 2007, 07:27 PMBoth books offer instruction on how to run tests, which is why those texts are used in polygraph schools.
Posted by George W. Maschke
- Dec 14, 2007, 12:22 AMQuote from: nopoly4me on Dec 13, 2007, 08:18 PMQuoteIn my opinion there is a real possibility that many innocent persons accused of crime would be unconcerned with what has been suggested to me are good control questions in comparison with the actual accusation. I have no doubt that some people do react as polygraph operators insist they must, but I am not convinced that this latter group of people would be an overwhelming proportion of our population.
George,
You made my point. Now read Offe and Offe and see that his suppositions aren't supported, and the NAS is slowly being shown to have been wrong in some of their speculations.
Barry,
While you've cherry-picked a sentence from Lykken's quotation from Canadian Justice Donald B. Morand's Report of the Ontario Royal Commission into Metropolitan Toronto Police Practices to support your characterization of Lykken's position regarding the CQT as being not based on evidence, but merely, "the CQT makes no sense to him, so it can't work," I think I've adequately demonstrated to the unbiased reader that this is not an accurate characterization.
With regard to my characterization of Matte's and Kleiner's books as not being "textbooks per se," I meant that they are written not so much as instructional books (which is what I think nopoly4me was looking for) but rather as reference works. In terms of what nopoly4me is seeking, I think these two books are nonetheless probably the closest match.
Posted by Barry_C
- Dec 13, 2007, 08:18 PMQuoteIn my opinion there is a real possibility that many innocent persons accused of crime would be unconcerned with what has been suggested to me are good control questions in comparison with the actual accusation. I have no doubt that some people do react as polygraph operators insist they must, but I am not convinced that this latter group of people would be an overwhelming proportion of our population.
George,
You made my point. Now read Offe and Offe and see that his suppositions aren't supported, and the NAS is slowly being shown to have been wrong in some of their speculations.
QuoteBarry, I call attention to how little training is required to become a newly minted polygrapher because there is a widespread misperception that becoming a polygrapher requires a great deal of specialized training. It doesn't, and hence it is no surprise that there is no college-style textbook that teaches one how to conduct polygraph examinations.
Did you miss what I said. Getting a graduate certificate in anything doesn't require much work? Earning a year's worth of college credits isn't a lot of training? Now you're showing your bias clearly. With as many problems as I have with Matte's reasoning and conclusions at times, his book qualifies as a textbook. Kleiner's does as well. DACA has created their own (actually a few for various subjects), some of which you've posted here. I have a college "text" (on evidence processing) from a local college that is a collection of smaller works - much like polygraph schools offer so as to avoid the unnecessary.
Posted by Jesper Paten
- Dec 13, 2007, 06:54 AMQuote
The book is hardly scholarly. It essentially says that the CQT makes no sense to him, so it can't work. That's not science,
Lykken was not a scientist ??
Quote
He (Lykken) also makes suppositions about polygraph that are wrong, but then again, he had no training in polygraph, so he wasn't an expert on the subject.
One does not have to attend the Hogwart School to know that the casting of spells and the like is non-scientific hogwash.
QuoteSome shcools also require students to read a lot of studies.
Sir, do we presume the same holds true for some Grammar Schools.
Respectfully,
JP
Posted by George W. Maschke
- Dec 13, 2007, 01:05 AMQuote from: nopoly4me on Dec 12, 2007, 07:19 PMQuoteThe best scholarly book on polygraphy is the late David T. Lykken's A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector (2nd edition, Plenum Trade, 1998).
The book is hardly scholarly. It essentially says that the CQT makes no sense to him, so it can't work. That's not science, and the much venerated NAS report disagreed with him in regard to single-issue tests. He also makes suppositions about polygraph that are wrong, but then again, he had no training in polygraph, so he wasn't an expert on the subject.
You may not like Lykken's conclusions regarding the lie detector, but your contention that A Tremor in the Blood is "hardly scholarly" begs credulity, and I think that few disinterested readers would agree with your characterization. While Lykken may not have gone to a polygraph trade school, he was most certainly a subject matter expert.
Lykken doesn't argue that "the CQT makes no sense to him, so it can't work." Here is his well-documented conclusion regarding CQT polygraphy (pp. 135-36 of the 2nd edition):
QuoteVerdict
The Control Question Test, widely regarded among polygraphers as their most refined technique, is the only lie detection method to have been seriously studied with respect to validity. As we have seen, some of these studies are defective or irrelevant; none of them are definitive. Because of the contamination resulting from reliance on polygraph-induced confessions as criteria of ground truth, the CQT's accuracy, especially in detecting guilty suspects, is overestimated by these studies to an unknown extent. As we shall see in Chapter 18, naive subjects can learn to beat the CQT with less than an hour's instruction, using covert countermeasures that experienced polygraphers cannot detect. The burden of proof, however, is (or should be) on the proponents of the method. Can they substantiate their claims of near-perfect accuracy? After listening to a week of testimony from critics of polygraphy and from such leading polygraphers as John Reid and Richard Arther, Justice Morand concluded:QuoteThe polygraph examiners had many opportunities to answer the problems and criticisms suggested by psychologists and physiologists. Unfortunately, their response was invariably that the criticisms were not valid because, in their experience, the test worked. I have come to the conclusion that I must accept the evidence of the psychologists and physiologists, which is consistent with both my common sense and my personal experience, that all individuals do not react in identical ways in a given situation, and that programming human responses is at best imperfect. In my opinion there is a real possibility that many innocent persons accused of crime would be unconcerned with what has been suggested to me are good control questions in comparison with the actual accusation. I have no doubt that some people do react as polygraph operators insist they must, but I am not convinced that this latter group of people would be an overwhelming proportion of our population.
Lykken's conclusions regarding the CQT's lack of validity accord well with those of the National Academy of Sciences report (summarized in Chapter 1 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector).
You also write:
QuoteQuoteAfter all, the longest polygraph course is only 14 weeks long, and 8 weeks is more typical.
George, you keep throwing this out in what appears to be an attempt to demean polygraph examiners and polygraph schools.
"Only 14 weeks"? That's not exactly true. First, most schools are 10 weeks long (academic portion). Some do eight in-residence with a two-week project of some sort to get to 10 weeks. After the academic portion, most require an internship of some type, making polygraph school about a year long in total.
Let's get back to that "mere" 8 to 14 weeks. Polygraph school consists of five to six eight-hour days. That's like taking 8 to 14 back-to-back j-terms (each a 40-hour 3-credit course). The 14-week course to which you refer is DACA's, and students leave there with a graduate certificate (15 credits!) from an accredited school - credits which transfer to another regionally accredited school and can be applied towards a graduate degree (in forensic psychology).
The school I attended was 12 weeks long, and I earned 28 undergraduate credits (from a regionally accredited college). My internship (which made school about a year long) was worth another five credits; although, I don't know if they ever got applied to my transcript.
The bottom line: if we spread my classes out like they did when most of us attended college, it would have taken a full academic year to complete - and that's just the academic portion. So, yes, we cram about a year's worth of training in a short period of time, but then that's all we do during that time is learn and study.
Barry, I call attention to how little training is required to become a newly minted polygrapher because there is a widespread misperception that becoming a polygrapher requires a great deal of specialized training. It doesn't, and hence it is no surprise that there is no college-style textbook that teaches one how to conduct polygraph examinations.
Posted by Barry_C
- Dec 12, 2007, 07:19 PMQuoteThe best scholarly book on polygraphy is the late David T. Lykken's A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector (2nd edition, Plenum Trade, 1998).
The book is hardly scholarly. It essentially says that the CQT makes no sense to him, so it can't work. That's not science, and the much venerated NAS report disagreed with him in regard to single-issue tests. He also makes suppositions about polygraph that are wrong, but then again, he had no training in polygraph, so he wasn't an expert on the subject.
With that said, it's worth reading.
Some schools use Matte's book as their text. I think others might use Murray Kleiner's, which I highly recommend. (It's got pro and con views.) Stan Abrams wrote some books along the way too. Keep in mind they also use various psychology, physiology, psychophysiology texts, etc. Some shcools also require students to read a lot of studies.
QuoteAfter all, the longest polygraph course is only 14 weeks long, and 8 weeks is more typical.
George, you keep throwing this out in what appears to be an attempt to demean polygraph examiners and polygraph schools.
"Only 14 weeks"? That's not exactly true. First, most schools are 10 weeks long (academic portion). Some do eight in-residence with a two-week project of some sort to get to 10 weeks. After the academic portion, most require an internship of some type, making polygraph school about a year long in total.
Let's get back to that "mere" 8 to 14 weeks. Polygraph school consists of five to six eight-hour days. That's like taking 8 to 14 back-to-back j-terms (each a 40-hour 3-credit course). The 14-week course to which you refer is DACA's, and students leave there with a graduate certificate (15 credits!) from an accredited school - credits which transfer to another regionally accredited school and can be applied towards a graduate degree (in forensic psychology).
The school I attended was 12 weeks long, and I earned 28 undergraduate credits (from a regionally accredited college). My internship (which made school about a year long) was worth another five credits; although, I don't know if they ever got applied to my transcript.
The bottom line: if we spread my classes out like they did when most of us attended college, it would have taken a full academic year to complete - and that's just the academic portion. So, yes, we cram about a year's worth of training in a short period of time, but then that's all we do during that time is learn and study.
Posted by George W. Maschke
- Dec 10, 2007, 10:23 AMI don't know of any textbooks for student polygraphers. I believe their primary instructional material consists of mimeographed hand-outs. After all, the longest polygraph course is only 14 weeks long, and 8 weeks is more typical.
Although not a text book per se, you might look at James Allan Matte's Forensic Psychophysiology Using the Polygraph, which includes some instructional sheets from the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego. See also the Handbook of Polygraph Testing edited by Murray Kleiner.
Although not a text book per se, you might look at James Allan Matte's Forensic Psychophysiology Using the Polygraph, which includes some instructional sheets from the Backster School of Lie Detection in San Diego. See also the Handbook of Polygraph Testing edited by Murray Kleiner.
Posted by nopolycop
- Dec 10, 2007, 10:17 AMThank-you George, I will attempt to find one. But, what I am primarily looking for are textbooks that are used in polygraph schools to teach and certify examiners.
Posted by George W. Maschke
- Dec 10, 2007, 10:08 AMThe best scholarly book on polygraphy is the late David T. Lykken's A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector (2nd edition, Plenum Trade, 1998). I highly recommend it. Although it is out of print, you might find it at your local public library, or you may be able to obtain a used copy through an on-line bookseller.
Posted by nopolycop
- Dec 10, 2007, 09:55 AMAre there college type text books available for purchase anywhere? If so, which are the best, and where are they purchased?