Relevant/Irrelevant

[rcast904]

Does anyone have advise on countermeasures for this test??? I have nothing to hide but i get really nervous for some reason.. If anyone has some advise please share, i really need it.. Thanks

[rcast904]

Someone please help!!!!!!!

[pailryder]

rcast904

If you have nothing to hide, what are you are you wanting to counter?  Clumsy use of cm will fail you quicker than anything other than lying.

[T.M. Cullen]

Read "The Lie Behind The Lie Detector", which can be downloaded from the home page.

Good Luck,

TC

[Anonymous]

pailryder,

That is the worst argument people use when others say they are afraid of the polygraph. All you need to do is read the complaints of false positives on here and at the officer.com forums to realize that many people are being incorrectly categorized as liars because of the polygraph.

The obvious answer is that rcast904 wishes to counter the poor accuracy of the polygraph.

[Anonymous too]

Yeah Pailryder  there are at least 9 or 10 new complaints about failed polygraphs posted  each year out of the thousands of tests that are done.  There is more cancer misdiagnosis nation wide each month than there are new "I failed my polygraph" complaints here each year

[pailryder]

Anonymous

If there were anything, other than telling the truth, that rcast904 could do to improve polygraph accuracy I would be all for it!

You tell me, what would it be?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous too,

Don't make the erroneous conclusion that every person that experiences a false positive must post on this website or on officer.com. That's just illogical. Most people who take a polygraph are undoubtedly unaware of this website or officer.com. Even if they were aware of these websites, that doesn't mean they are posting on them.

pailryder,

You asked rcast904 what he wished to counter using countermeasures. I responded that he evidently wishes to counter the polygraph's accuracy, which is horrendously low for a screening method. In other words, he wishes to protect himself from becoming a victim of a false positive.

There will never be anything that increases the polygraph's accuracy to an acceptable number because the theory that the polygraph is based on is inherently incorrect. The fight or flight response is absolutely not indicative of lying, and the absence of said response is not indicative of truth. Psychologists, medical doctors and scientists alike agree: the polygraph is not valid.

[Anonymous Too]

My conclusion is no more egregious than your conclusion that the number of complaints of false positives on here and at the officer.com forums are evidence of some systemic problem with polygraph that renders it worthless.  In fact Polygraph does quite well against medical diagnostic and screening procedures

Crewson, P.E. (2001) A Comparative Analysis of
Polygraph with Other Screening and Diagnostic Tools.

And while we're discussing erroneous conclusions, your statement that there will never be anything that increases polygraph accuracy falsely presumes that it is insufficiently accurate for the purpose which it is designed. and just because SOME psychologists, medical doctors and scientists question it's accuracy does not justify your broad statement that you deliberately structured to give the false impression that ALL psychologists, medical doctors and scientists agree that polygraph is not valid.

They don't and you should know that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous Too,

I presented the large number of people who complain about false positives as a reason that people (like rcast904) should be concerned with the possibility of it happening to themselves. I never suggested that that in and of itself rendered the polygraph worthless. The fact that it is hardly more accurate than flipping a coin and that it is pseudoscientific makes the polygraph worthless.

Both the American Psychological Association and the American Medical Association condemn the polygraph. These are the premier associations of their field. It's not just SOME psychologists or SOME medical doctors that support the notion that the polygraph is a failure, it is the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous Too,

By the way, the study you sourced was funded by the federal government's polygraph school and was published in a polygraphy journal. Try using a study that isn't biased from the start and that is published in a real journal peer reviewed by actual scientists.

[George W. Maschke]

Does anyone have advise on countermeasures for this test??? I have nothing to hide but i get really nervous for some reason.. If anyone has some advise please share, i really need it.. Thanks  

As T.M. Cullen suggested, see The Lie Behind the Lie Detector. In particular, the behavioral countermeasures discussed in Chapter 4 may be helpful with the Relevant/Irrelevant technique.

[T.M. Cullen]

Rcast904,

You still there?  Come in please, over!

TC

[T.M. Cullen]

If there were anything, other than telling the truth, that rcast904 could do to improve polygraph accuracy I would be all for it!

You tell me, what would it be?

How could telling the truth improve polygraph accuracy?  The polygraph is suppose to detect the truth.  Either it's accurate, or not.

I believe his concern is telling the truth YET failing (i.e. false positive).

[Anonymous Too]

Anonymous, you wrote: "the study you sourced was funded by the federal government's polygraph school and was published in a polygraphy journal"

Big Deal and So What.  It was a comparative analysis of existing research. Interested parties wrote ALL the research papers used in the analysis. Doctors wrote the medical papers. Psychologists wrote the studies regarding psychological screening. Are you suggesting that in order to be fair, all should be evaluated by scientists that have no knowledge or interest in polygraph, medicine or psychology? Maybe we should have podiatrists conducting brain stem research just so it will be unbiased. Get real.

Do you have evidence that the findings of the Crewes Study are inaccurate or false or are you just attacking the source because you are unable to refute the findings?

The American Medical Association at committee level acknowledges polygraph accuracy rates as high as 97% and far from condemning the polygraph they just called for more research. The issue with varying error rates for polygraph does not come from any problem with the instrument or the process. The confusion largely comes from the fact that polygraph is not a single test or process. Polygraph consists of several different types of tests and each will have its own error rate which may or may not be different from the others.

If you submit to a drug screen urinalysis as part of your job application process, you use one urine sample, (your own if you're honest, someone elses if you believe that the process is inaccurate and you convince yourself that countermeasures are justified) and one cup, but based on the screening protocol you may be submitting to between five and seven different tests each with it's own different error rate.

Of course, if you are actually using drugs, you would use predominately the same countermeasures as the guy who was not using drugs, but feared a false positive due to error rate. If you were caught using the countermeasures you would be treated exactly the same, drug use or not and you should be. It isn't a noble protest or dissention, or an attempt to change the rules, it's cheating and its dishonest. An "truthful"person who uses polygraph countermeasures and gets caught is indistinguishable from a dishonest person using the same countermeasures and getting caught and they should be treated exactly the same. No job. No career. No way.


Besides it is foolish to presume that just because one pays dues to a professional association, like the AMA, that they OVERWHELMINGLY agree on all or any positions espoused by the association. You don't really believe they vote on positions do you? The AMA is so entrenched in medical society that many Doctors feel obligated to join whether they agree or not. I'll bet that the vast majority are unfamiliar with the AMA committee report on polygraph or its findings. Saying that Doctors overwhelmingly agree with AMA's statements about polygraph is a bit like saying Germans overwhelmingly agreed with the Holocaust in that taking a non-confrontational stance is not quite the same as an endorsement. If it were, most of the German population would have been convicted of war crimes.